Quarterly Journal of Speech

Vol. 96, No. 1, February 2010, pp. 2545

The Sophistical Attitude and the

Invention of Rhetoric
Nathan Crick

Traditionally, the Older Sophists were conceived as philosophical skeptics who rejected
speculative inquiry to focus on rhetorical methods of being successful in practical life.
More recently, this view has been complicated by studies revealing the Sophists to be a
diverse group of intellectuals who practiced their art prior to the categorization of
‘‘rhêtorikê,’’ thereby rendering the very meaning of the general term ‘‘Sophist’’ far more
problematic. Both perspectives conceal the common attitude that unites the Sophists as a
group and is central to understanding their democratic ethos rooted in an experimental
attitude that draws on the resources of speculative reason to serve the purpose of radical
invention necessary for a democratization of the productive arts. Recovering the
professionalism and experimentalism of the Sophists contributes to the democratic
project of promoting the productive and collaborative arts*including rhetoric*that
employ the resources of theoretical knowledge to inform collective practice and thereby
assist in controlling the fortunes of humankind in a changing world.

Keywords: Classical Rhetoric; Democracy; Experimentalism; Inquiry; Pragmatism

The Sophists taught that man could largely control the fortunes of life by mastery
of the arts. . . . [For them,] arts based on knowledge coöperate with nature and
render it amenable to human happiness. The gods recede into twilight. Divination
has a powerful competitor. Worship becomes moral. Medicine, war, and the crafts
desert the temple and the altar of the patron-god of the guild, as inventions, tools,
techniques of action and works multiply . . . Through instrumental arts, arts of
control based on study of nature, objects which are fulfilling and good, may be
multiplied and rendered secure. This road after almost two millennia of
obscuration and desertion was refound and retaken; its rediscovery marks what
we call the modern era.
John Dewey, Experience and Nature
According to John Dewey, the Sophists were the first practitioners of experimental
method in art and in science. Arising from a mytho-poetic culture in which

Nathan Crick is Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies as Louisiana State University.
Correspondence to: Nathan Crick, 136 Coates Hall, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, USA. Email: crick@lsu.edu.

ISSN 0033-5630 (print)/ISSN 1479-5779 (online) # 2010 National Communication Association

DOI: 10.1080/00335630903512705
26 N. Crick
‘‘[d]ivination of the intent of unseen powers and pious sacrifice’’ were the only
resources to address crises of instability and change, the Sophists marked a distinct
change in mood in the ancient world.1 After a century of gradual democratization,
fifth-century-BCE Greece witnessed a spectacular military triumph over the Persians
that simultaneously concentrated regional power in Athens while expanding the
opportunity for individual citizens to participate in culture and politics. In what
George Kerferd calls the new democratic ‘‘economics of empire,’’ a culture once marked
by rigid class distinctions and an allegiance to a city-state was invaded by the spirit of
movement*artistically, intellectually, politically, and socially.2 As Edward Schiappa
explains, ‘‘[o]ral and written prose challenged poetry, anthropocentric or ‘scientific’
explanations challenged theistic traditions, and radical democracy challenged more
elitist forms of government.’’3
The Sophists had not brought about this revolution. Protagoras, the oldest of the
Sophists, was born around 490 BCE, the year of the first victory over the Persians at
Marathon and almost three decades prior to the ‘‘Golden Age’’ of Pericles. Nevertheless,
they came to encompass what Eric Havelock characterizes as the Promethean spirit of
their age in which ‘‘[m]an the tool user (as in architecture, navigation and metallurgy)
is conjoined with man the abstract scientist (in numerals, alphabet and medicine) to
produce a single perspective upon the character and functions of homo sapiens.’’4 The
Sophists were thus part of the Greek Enlightenment, which advanced the experimental
notion that human beings could control their fortunes through the productive arts
(technai)*a notion that the ambitious citizens of the newly founded democratic
empire were ready to hear.
The Sophists distinguished themselves within this general movement by focusing
particularly on arts of discourse. Although this study included what would later be
defined as the technê of rhetoric, the art of persuasion was not their exclusive interest.
As Michael Gagarin argues, the Sophists are better understood more broadly as
experimentalists in the use of discourse as a productive and poetic art: ‘‘[I]n most
cases persuasion is in the background and is less important than several other
objectives, such as the serious exploration of issues and forms of argument, the
display of ingenuity in thought, argument and style of expression, and the desire to
dazzle, shock and please.’’5
Like the term rhêtorikê with which they are associated, the current meaning of the
term ‘‘Sophist’’ was something that occurred only subsequent to Plato’s efforts to define
and to criticize their practices. Prior to the appearance of rhêtorikê, Schiappa observes
that ‘‘both Sophist and philosopher claimed the province of logos,’’ a term that denotes
discourse, reason, argument, and explanation.6 It is this mastery of logos, and not just of
rhetorical persuasion, that warrants Susan Jarratt’s claim that ‘‘the sophists could be
termed the first public intellectuals in a democracy.’’7
Yet much of our subsequent appropriation of sophistical wisdom turns on what we
take a ‘‘public intellectual’’ to be. In one interpretation, a public intellectual is primarily
a philosopher who possesses a secondary talent for attracting public interest in their
ideas. In this reading, the Sophist is less an experimental wordsmith than what Scott
Consigny calls ‘‘an antifoundationalist struggling against foundational rivals.’’8 In this
 Sophistical Attitude and Invention of Rhetoric 27

narrative, the Sophist emerges as what W. K. C. Guthrie calls an exemplar of ‘‘the

humanistic reaction against the natural philosophers, whose contradictory specula-
tions were bringing them into disrepute among practical men.’’9 Here, the Sophists are
public intellectuals only insofar as they are familiar enough with the ‘‘philosophical’’
discourse of their era to reject it in favor of ‘‘practical’’ pursuits like politics, law, and
business. This perspective, which I believe has remained the dominant account since
Plato despite differences in valuation, is summarized succinctly by Christopher Lyle
Johnstone in his effort to define ‘‘sophistical wisdom.’’ He writes,
A sophistical consciousness is rooted firmly in an awareness of the ultimate
inaccessibility and unfathomability of Reality, and of the role of language in the
construction and perception of the unstable ‘‘realities’’ and ‘‘truths’’ in terms of
which we must live our lives. It holds that appearance and opinion are the closest
that human beings can come to ‘‘truth’’ and ‘‘knowledge’’ about the world, and that
opinion is subject to persuasion through speech. A sophistical sophia, consequently,
reverts to the poeia of the word-smith: facility with logos in the realm of social
experience, skill in speaking, word-wisdom.10
Although the Promethean ethos is clearly present here in terms of the Sophists as
wordsmiths, it appears in Johnstone’s interpretation only negatively.11 Rather than
beginning with the integrity of social experience as a constructive premise and then
projecting intelligent possibilities based on that premise, Johnstone suggests that we
only ‘‘revert’’ to facility with logos after having admitted the unfathomability of reality.
In short, the Sophist is an antifoundationalist first, a productive artist and pedagogue
second.
The problem with this interpretation is that it severs the productive link between
theory and practice. Rooted firmly in the dualism that the Sophists are often said to
oppose, the notion that a ‘‘sophistical consciousness’’ originates in epistemological
skepticism and only then settles for instrumental practice is grounded in the Platonic
assumption that the cognitions of the mind are prior to the actions of the body, both
temporally and logically. Ironically, the only substantive difference between Johnstone’s
reading of the Sophists and that of Plato is the substitution of a negative for a positive
valence. Plato, after all, has already included a skeptical philosophy and an
entrepreneurial spirit as part of his original formulation.12 Thus, Johnstone and Plato
agree that being a metaphysical nihilist and epistemological skeptic are preconditions
for pursuing such a worldly practice of teaching the verbal arts. But if such a narrative is
accurate, then one’s theoretical speculations have nothing at all to do with one’s
productive methods or praxis beyond ethical license.13
One can, of course, simply dismiss the definitional question ‘‘What is a Sophist?’’ as
itself either meaningless or unanswerable.14 Yet I believe that reconstructing a
sophistical identity is important if the sophistic legacy is to remain vital for
contemporary rhetorical education and practice. As Jarratt argues, for those ‘‘who
wish to participate in the revitalization of our own democracy, the voice of sophistic
rhetoric speaks out in playful, persuasive, and promising tones.’’15 Hearing this voice,
however, requires a revision of our dualistic understanding of a public intellectual to
mean something more than an intellectual skeptic with a knack for public speaking; it
28 N. Crick
requires a pragmatic approach that defines public intellectuals as those who use all the
resources of reflective thought to bring forth productive transformations in a complex
and changing environment.16 Through this lens, the Sophists are not theorists who then
turn toward practice; they are primarily practitioners who develop theories to enrich
and broaden subsequent practice. Their historical example thus provides a model for
how theory and practice can work together to develop radical democratic pedagogies
rooted in an attitude of experimentalism and expressed in novel methods of invention.17
In this essay, I argue that the determining characteristic of the fifth-century-BCE
Sophists was not the awkward combination of philosophical skepticism and
entrepreneurial ambition. Rather, it was their novel approach to rhetorical invention,
which naturally grew out of a thoroughgoing experimental attitude by which ideas and
actions were allowed to interpenetrate and inform one another across a situated and
temporal horizon. For the Sophists, argues Eduard Zeller, knowledge was only valuable
insofar as it aided in the ‘‘art and control of life.’’18 The attitude that treats even
speculative knowledge as a necessary means toward an enriched and more fruitful
action is largely a Sophistical legacy. Once we institute the sophistical texts within their
and our own times, we hear more clearly their voices and begin to take on their attitude:
an experimental approach to things, people, events, and ideas that brings intellectual
resources to bear on the means and ends of artistic production in order to generate new
methods of invention necessary to master the contingencies of life and guide the flux of
nature. Recognition of this attitude not only redirects our vision to look for the subtle
ways in which even their most abstract philosophizing was a practical expression of
their powers of invention; it also demonstrates how the tradition of ‘‘rhetoric’’*while
arguably established by Plato as a formal genre*ultimately remained most faithful to
the sophistical attitude.

Sophist as Experimentalist
To locate the essence of the term ‘‘Sophist’’ in attitude is to offer an alternative to the
dualistic choice between ‘‘ideas’’ and ‘‘actions.’’ Such an alternative is necessary to avoid
the almost absurd gymnastics that usually result when trying to match their theory with
their practice (or their ‘‘philosophy’’ with their ‘‘rhetoric’’). For instance, Guthrie, at
one moment, says the ‘‘Sophists were not a particular philosophical school, but rather a
profession,’’ only to claim on the very same page that the ‘‘Sophists shared something
which may more properly be called a philosophical attitude, namely a common
scepticism, a mistrust of the possibility of absolute knowledge.’’ 19 Yet these paradoxical
claims follow naturally from dualistic interpretations that assume a natural division
between ‘‘theoretical’’ statements that address the mind/world relationship (i.e.,
Protagoras’s claim that a ‘‘human being is the measure of all things’’ [1]) and
‘‘practical’’ statements that address the body/world relationship (i.e., Protagoras’s
assertion that ‘‘[t]eaching requires natural talent and practice’’ [10]).20 As long as one
assumes that either mind or body must be the sole originator of action, one will always
be forced either into taking sides or spinning so fast between two opposite poles as to
make one dizzy.21
 Sophistical Attitude and Invention of Rhetoric 29

The notion of ‘‘attitude,’’ by contrast, is rooted in a more ecological perspective that

views human behavior as growing out of what Kenneth Burke calls a ‘‘relationship
between the organism and its environment.’’22 From this perspective, human experience
is an organic whole out of which ‘‘patterns’’ emerge that serve as ‘‘adjustments of the
organism’’ to the challenges of recurrent conditions.23 For Burke, an attitude is neither a
cognitive belief nor a purely bodily habit but ‘‘an implicit program of action.’’24 Attitude
emphasizes that the ‘‘body is an actor; as an actor, it participates in the movements of the
mind, posturing correspondingly.’’25 Consequently, it focuses attention on the learned
orientations that help the whole person (and whole community of persons) adapt to
recurrent modes of experience. If one begins with attitude, then, the distinction between
mind and body arises only subsequent to the capacity to reflect abstractly on one’s
experience through the use of symbols, thus creating a sense of distance between the
thought and the act. The ‘‘thinking’’ that occurs even in philosophy thereby translates
into a delayed form of action, a sophisticated equipment ‘‘for handling the complexities
of living’’ by enriching and redirecting attitudes in response to changing situations.26
Unique about the Sophists is that they reflected a new professional attitude that took
attitude seriously. Jarratt observes, for example, that ‘‘the sophists explored the play of
language*its effects on the whole person . . . while in content investigating critically
the way language worked in and on both body and mind.’’27 Like Havelock’s
Prometheus, the Sophists denied the split between practical and theoretical knowledge.
Their attitude seems radical to us only because we have inherited the post-Platonic
distinction between rational knowledge (epistêmê) and productive art (technê).
However, in Homeric times, to possess knowledge of any kind was to possess a
practical acquaintance with how things come to be and pass away; it meant, in
Heidegger’s terms, ‘‘to be entirely at home in something, to understand and be expert in
it.’’28 Both epistêmê and technê were ultimately concerned with the act of ‘‘bringing-
forth’’ (poiēsis) that makes present things previously concealed or inchoate.29 In short,
to possess knowledge was to know how to bring a preferred reality into being over time
through active engagement with the things and people of a shared environment.
By the time of the Sophists, however, epistêmê and technê had begun to part ways.
Although Plato and Aristotle later formalized this distinction, it was the predecessors to
the Sophists, known as the pre-Socratic philosophers, who first separated rational
knowledge of universal Being from practical knowledge that dealt with a world of
ephemeral Becoming. For them, the task of knowledge was not to stand over and
control a changing world; rather, the task was to pierce the veil of appearances and
transcend the limitations of custom by using logos (the language of logical argument) to
grasp the Logos (the natural and rational world order). According to Zeller, these
natural philosophers (physikoi) had sprung up early in the sixth century BCE to ‘‘set in
the place of a mythological world a world of ideas built up by the strength of
independent human thought, the logos, which could claim to explain reality in a natural
way.’’30 Beginning with Thales (640546 BCE), the pre-Socratics were bound by what
Guthrie calls a ‘‘faith that beneath the apparent multiplicity and confusion of the
universe around us there exists a fundamental simplicity and stability which reason
may discover.’’31 It was this faith that ultimately culminated in the long tradition of
30 N. Crick
philosophical dualism, which Dewey refers to as the ‘‘division between acquaintance
with matters of fact and contemplative appreciation, between unintelligent practice
and unpractical intelligence.’’32
Yet as much as Dewey derided the persistence of this dualism, he also recognized that
the aloof character of the pre-Socratic attitude toward knowledge represented a
necessary step in the development of the modern experimental attitude that would be
embodied in the Sophists. According to Dewey, the accomplishments of the pre-
Socratics were absolutely ‘‘beyond the reach of artist and artisan’’ of the day.33 In the
sixth century BCE, Greek artisans were still largely bound by the inherited traditions of
the past and were largely unable to step out of the limited constraints of their narrow
horizons. Their lives were ones of strict routine. With the pre-Socratics, relations
expanded to include almost infinite bounds of time and place. Hence, ‘‘the idea of
knowledge was thereby liberated, and the scheme of logical relationships among
existences held up as an ideal of inquiry.’’34 Practically, this ideal emancipated the
intellectual imagination. Thales, for instance, was able to transcend the practical
concerns of navigation and measurement to speculate that water is the essential element
of existence, that the earth rests on water, and that all things are full of gods. With the
pre-Socratics, the idea that independent speculative reason*of logos*is something to
value and preserve for its own sake took hold in the Western world and remains a vital
source of inspiration. Dualism in knowledge was simply a way to protect and to valorize
this newfound intellectual autonomy from tradition and law.35
The Sophists were the clear inheritors of this pre-Socratic intellectual legacy. What
distinguished them from the pre-Socratics was less a shared philosophical position than
an attitude that was a natural adjustment to an age of great power, optimism, and
opportunity. John Poulakos describes the early fifth century BCE as a time when ‘‘the
aristocracy of the nobility was yielding to a democracy of citizens; the aristocracy of the
myths was losing its authority to a democracy of public arguments; the aristocracy of
the oracles was receding before a democracy of human laws; and the aristocracy of
poetry was relinquishing its glory to a democracy of prosaic discourses.’’36 The
consequence of these cultural shifts was a breakdown in the traditional divide between
unintelligent practice and unpractical intelligence that had long marked Greek life.
With the ability for individuals to use their knowledge and skills both to climb the social
hierarchy and also to alter its very framework, attention naturally turned toward
developing an ideal of intelligent practice*of employing the resources of logos to bring
forth new and better states of being into the world. Dewey says that for the sophistical
and the modern eras alike, it was the ‘‘introduction of inventive thought into the arts
and the civil emancipation of the industrial class [that] at last made the transformation
possible.’’37 Once citizens and laborers were freed from the constraints of caste, they
naturally sought out all and any resources available to advance themselves in a changing
and uncertain world.38
It is this pragmatic orientation that Dewey highlights in his reading of the Sophists.39
His claim that their aim was to ‘‘control the fortunes of life by mastery of the arts’’ is
neither to assert the superiority of the arts over philosophy nor to erase the distinction
between epistêmê and technê.40 It is rather to understand epistêmê as a more abstract
 Sophistical Attitude and Invention of Rhetoric 31

system of representations that can be used as a resource for the arts of productive
transformation. Dewey, for instance, notes that in ‘‘the early history of Greek reflective
thought, art, or technê, and science, were synonymous,’’ such that even things like the
‘‘[m]easurement of angles of inclination and declination was a practical part of meeting
a practical need.’’41 The pre-Socratics emancipated epistêmê from these narrowly
practical ends in an effort to give the speculative imagination freedom to roam. The
Sophists then reunited the two spheres of knowledge without collapsing them, thereby
preserving intellectual autonomy while nonetheless recognizing that the long-term
value of speculation was measured by its ability to enrich political and cultural life.42
My central claim is that the core of sophistical methods of invention grew out of this
experimental attitude toward knowledge in which theory was a means for generating
novel perspectives and guiding situated practices within kairotic moments.

Aretē: The Power of Control

The sophistical attitude toward knowledge grew out of the Sophists’ professional
capacity as educators whose primary function was to provide practical mastery of
mental and physical virtues (aretē). As teachers of the young and ambitious, they
would have quickly recognized that methods of invention are impotent without a
disciplined, virtuous agent capable of seeing those methods through to fruition. It
is hardly surprising, then, that Hippias would have earned a reputation for
cultivating the ethic of ‘‘self-sufficiency,’’ which he was said to have demonstrated
by appearing at the Olympic Games wearing only those things he made himself.43
Antiphon, too, argues that there is ‘‘nothing worse for people than unruliness
(anarchia)’’ (61). Far from encouraging a circumstantial opportunism, Antiphon
emphasized the importance of a disciplined education that instills long-term virtues
in youth: ‘‘Whatever seed one plants in the earth, one should expect the harvest to
be similar; and whenever one plants an excellent education in a young body, it will
live and thrive for its entire life, and neither rainstorm nor drought will destroy it’’
(60). Finally, the entire moral of Prodicus’s Choice of Heracles is that young men
seeking genuine happiness and honor must discover the path of Virtue that leads
through disciplined labor guided by knowledge of the arts. Virtue says,
The gods give nothing really good or honorable to mortals without diligence and
toil. If you want the gods to favor you, you must serve the gods; if you wish to be
loved by friends, you must be good to your friends; if you desire honor from a city,
you must benefit that city; if you think all Greece should admire you for your aretē,
then you must work for the benefit of Greece; if you want the earth to bear you
abundant fruit, you must cultivate the earth; if you think you should get rich from
cattle, you must tend to your cattle; if you are eager to grow great through war and
want to be able to liberate your friends and conquer your enemies, you must learn
the skills (technai) of warfare from those who have mastered them and then
practice their correct use. And finally, if you want to be physically powerful, you
must accustom your body to serving the mind and train it with sweat and toil. (2)
32 N. Crick
Few other passages in the sophistical texts reveal more starkly how irrelevant
epistemological skepticism is to their common project. The choice faced by Heracles
is not between foundationalism and antifoundationalism, but between the honor-
able, disciplined life of labor and the disgraceful, indulgent life of leisure. Moreover,
it is between the thinking life and the impulsive life. Virtue argues, ‘‘[Y]ou must
accustom your body to serving the mind and train it with sweat and toil’’ (2). For
Virtue, the body is not simply denied or shunned, as it is in Parmenides and in many
of the pre-Socratics. Quite the opposite, as indicated by the earthy metaphors
employed by Prodicus, it means the total embrace of bodily experience insofar as that
experience is organized, guided, and disciplined by the reflective methods of the arts.
Similarly does Thrasymachus condemn those who ‘‘speak thoughtlessly in their
desire to win debates’’ (1), and Gorgias warns that frightening sights, like the clash of
arms, cause people to lose ‘‘their present purpose in the present moment, so
thoroughly does fear extinguish and expel thought’’ (11). These statements are not
metaphysical doctrines; they are rather ordinary assertions of what happens to those
without proper mastery in arts. One sees this attitude expressed more fully in the
Anonymus Iamblichi, a sophistical educational treatise likely of late fifth or early
fourth century BCE:
Moreover, every man should be especially concerned to exercise the greatest self-
control. Someone would best do this if he should be superior to money, which
brings all men to ruin, and should show no concern for his own soul (psuchē) in his
eager pursuit of justice and aretē. For most people lack self-control in these two
matters.44
This defense of sophistical education contrasts so greatly with the dramatic portrait
of Polus and Callicles in the Gorgias as to be virtually mundane. Yet little in the
sophistical fragments actually supports the reading of the Sophists as radical skeptics
and rapacious entrepreneurs. Indeed, most of the Sophists had high reputations as
virtuous men: Gorgias, Prodicus, and Hippias all successfully represented their
communities as ambassadors to Athens, and Protagoras was said to have had a close
relationship with Pericles to the extent that he was designated to draft the constitution
for the Athenian colony of Thurii. Additionally, the two examples of political oratory
delivered by Gorgias*the Olympic Speech and the Funeral Oration*were described by
Philostratus as being models of appropriateness that adapted his message of Pan-
Hellenism to audiences of Athenians and Greeks.45 Far from upending the political
and economic system, the Sophists were, in Burke’s terms, ‘‘closely allied with the
rising business class’’ and thus thrived by offering ambitious citizens the skills to make
the most of their opportunities in both politics and economy.46 Their experimental
attitude was a reflection of an optimistic era that believed that humankind could
control its own fate through the power of the arts once fused with the resources of
intelligence and the methods of invention. In this way, the virtue of self-discipline was
the method of methods, the means by which any subsequent skill could be learned,
retained, and implemented in a changing world.
 Sophistical Attitude and Invention of Rhetoric 33

Logos: The Disclosure of the World

What has long concealed the experimentalism of the sophistical attitude is the
dualistic reading of their so-called theory of language that would privilege
‘‘appearance’’ over ‘‘reality’’ and render language a plaything of the illusionist.
This is the Platonic legacy of ‘‘sophistry,’’ a legacy one sees reflected in the words of
Alain Badiou, who laments that what passes for ‘‘contemporary ‘philosophy’ is a sort
of generalized sophistry . . . [l]anguage games, deconstruction, weak thought, radical
heterogeneity, differend and differences, the ruin of Reason, the promotion of the
fragment.’’47 In part, this legacy stems from the historical fact that the Sophists
focused their energies on developing a new semantic knowledge that created subtle
classifications in grammatical forms and made fine distinctions between words.
Prodicus, for instance, was known for insisting on the precise use of terms by
distinguishing their shades of meaning from each other. Aristotle notes that
Prodicus distinguishes three forms of pleasure: ‘‘joy’’ (chara), ‘‘delight’’ (terpsis), and
‘‘good cheer’’ (euphrosyne), but protests that they are ‘‘just different names for the
same thing, ‘pleasure’’’ (hêdonê). Alexander of Aphrodisias adds that ‘‘this is the sort
of thing said by men who love to lay down trivial laws, but have no care to say
anything sensible.’’48 Aristotle and Alexander thus anticipate Badiou’s contemporary
lament of sophistry as a deconstruction of logos for no other purpose than to profess
mastery in an irrelevant form of pseudo-knowledge.
Following Plato’s lead, it is tempting to read the Sophists as celebrating the
emancipatory effects of a thoroughgoing nominalistic skepticism*since we have no
access to Being, and since our knowledge of Being comes through logos, any distinction
in logos matters because logos, in effect, creates Being. Yet the whole notion that the
Sophists would rest their professional credentials on such abstract metaphysical
doctrines as the inaccessibility of Being and the radical heterogeneity of language is to
completely misinterpret their professional character. They were, first and foremost,
public figures: as educators, teachers, and artists, they performed their labor in the
public eye and were responsible for catering to its needs. Consequently, their ideas were
only valuable insofar as they could be readily grasped and put into practice by the
reasonably literate Greek citizen. For instance, much might be made of the
metaphysical and epistemological implications of the three extant fragments of
Protagoras: ‘‘A human being is measure of all things’’ (1); ‘‘On every subject there are
two logoi [speeches or arguments] opposed to one another’’49; and ‘‘Concerning the
gods, I am not in a position to know either that they exist or that they do not’’ (4).
However, when viewed as practical and pedagogical statements, their effect is to shift
our attention from divine to human affairs, from transcendent to human experience,
from dogmatic faith to deliberative judgment. According to Schiappa, Protagoras
suggests that the ‘‘way to wisdom was not divinely inspired poetry but contrasting
human prose arguments. Protagoras’ preference for logos can be understood as
advocacy (through praxis) for a new way of thinking about the world.’’50
Logos then becomes, for the Sophist, a means of transforming bad experiences into
better ones by first bringing forth unrecognized qualities of things and then suggesting
34 N. Crick
new possibilities of action based on their analysis and comparison. To make fine
distinctions in words is thus to create a more precise tool of measurement for the sake of
more productive control and more effective display. Prodicus demonstrates this
attitude in The Choice of Heracles. Just as Aristotle mentioned that he had distinguished
between three forms of pleasure, we find Heracles being tempted by two of those forms.
On the one hand, the personification of ‘‘Vice’’ promises the ‘‘path of pleasure and ease’’
on which ‘‘you will taste every delight and avoid all trouble in life’’ (2). On the other
hand, the personification of ‘‘Virtue’’ also promises that which is ‘‘that most pleasant
sight,’’ which is ‘‘your own good works’’ that bring honor and fame (2). In other words,
despite the disclaimer by ‘‘Virtue’’ that she will ‘‘not deceive you with preludes about
pleasure,’’ the difference between Virtue and Vice is actually between different types of
pleasure*one being immediate, private, sensual gratification of irrational impulses;
the other being delayed, public, emotional satisfaction of rational desire (2). If these
distinctions in logos were unavailable, then the conflict between Virtue and Vice would
explode into an unproductive binary between selfish pleasure and dutiful labor, a
binary that reappears constantly in closed societies uncomfortable with nuance. As
logos absorbs the wisdom of collective experience, however, these fine distinctions
enable individuals to see the nuances inherent in events, things, and situations that
make possible more precise judgments capable of bringing forth desirable con-
sequences with greater forethought. Words, in short, are tools for disclosing previously
concealed aspects of the world in order to invent new forms of thought and action.

Imitatio: The Bridge between Old and New

If valuable perspectives are preserved in words, then it is only natural that the Sophists
would respect rather than reject the social knowledge accumulated in the logoi of
tradition, history, and convention. Methodologically, it was imitatio that embodied this
attitude toward inherited authority and precedent. As Michael Leff explains, imitatio
does not imply ‘‘mere repetition or mechanistic reproduction of something found in an
existing text.’’51 Rather, it is an active process that allows ‘‘historical texts to serve as
resources for invention.’’52 As exemplified in Protagoras’s response to Socrates that ‘‘the
greatest part of a man’s education is to be in command of poetry,’’ imitatio exposed
students to the great works of literature in order to train them in proper methods of
composition and criticism.53 Yet the Sophists went further than just training students
in literary history; they also used these texts as models to ‘‘impart the practical
judgment and linguistic resources an orator needed to encompass particular
situations.’’54 In this way, the extant speeches of Gorgias, most clearly expressed in
the Defense of Palamedes, were meant to be used for imitation purposes rather than
public argument.
Although we are accustomed to thinking of imitatio primarily in terms of the
imitation of discrete speeches, as Roman orators might imitate the style of
Demosthenes, sophistical experimentalism encouraged a much broader scope. It is
in this way that one can account for the odd mixture of pious conservatism and
impious radicalism that almost always appears in sophistical fragments. So, for
 Sophistical Attitude and Invention of Rhetoric 35

example, the Sophists appear impious when they playfully imitate both philosophical
and canonical texts for their own purposes, as Gorgias does in Helen, and yet, they often
take on a pious voice when they more soberly draw from the resources of tradition and
nomos to defend their particular positions, as Thrasymachus does in On the
Constitution. Here, imitatio encourages respect for and consideration of inherited
wisdom as a precondition for wise judgment in the face of a contingency.
Thrasymachus thus unites sophistical attention to the kairotic particular in which
one is ‘‘compelled to speak’’ with a more traditional respect for precedent (1). After
describing the exigent circumstances that face Athenians in a time of tyranny that
would seek a radical usurpation of the political order, he counters,
First, the ancestral constitution causes confusion, though it is very easy to
understand and belongs to all citizens in common. We must listen to the words of
our ancestors for whatever lies beyond our own understanding, and whatever the
elders among us have seen, this we must learn from those with knowledge. (1)
Like Gorgias, then, Thrasymachus admits the uniqueness of the situation that escapes
absolute judgment, but he also insists that we must make use of all available resources to
at least narrow available choices. What astronomers preserve in speculative theories is
thus analogous to what cities preserve in constitutions: the collective yet fallible wisdom
of historical experience that offers guidance in times of crisis.
Given its inherent quality as a productive link between the old and the new, a
successful practice of imitatio naturally demands a keen and creative memory capable
of bringing elements of the past into the present. The famous improvisational ability
of men like Gorgias, who often went into the Athenian theater to demand that his
audience ‘‘suggest a subject’’ before embarking on extemporaneous oratory, was only
possible through possession of a well of memorized texts to draw on for inspiration
and invention.55 The method of memoria was a major contribution of Hippias, which
Plato calls his ‘‘most brilliant achievement.’’56 This method accords with a passage later
attributed to Hippias by Clement:
Some of these things may have been said by Orpheus, some by Musaeus briefly in
various places, some by Hesiod and Homer, some by other poets, others in prose
works of Greek and non-Greek writers; but by putting together the most significant
and kindred material from all these sources, I shall make this piece both new and
varied.57
Like those from Protagoras and Gorgias, of course, this example from Hippias had all
the marks of an epideictic speech meant for purposes of display. However, these
display speeches were also intended to embody practical methods of invention and
delivery. In his rhetorical method of memoria, a rhetor would be prepared to draw on
the stored resources of imitatio to create a bricolage that generates a new idea whose
whole was greater than the parts inherited from the past. Once again reflecting an
experimental attitude, Hippias viewed the cumulative art and wisdom of his culture
as a palette with which to create new works of discourse on the canvas of the right
moment.
36 N. Crick
Dissoi Logoi: The Clash of Perspectives
The method of invention known as dissoi logoi, or ‘‘double argument,’’ equally grows
from an attitude that would view words as a partial disclosure of the world. If imitatio
encourages us to see how the old may become new when placed within a new context,
the dissoi logoi emphasizes the process by which novelty arises from the clash of
competing perspectives. As Poulakos describes it, dissoi logoi is a method based on the
premise ‘‘that in order to understand an issue, one must be prepared to listen to at least
two contrary sides; and in order to decide how to act, one must espouse one of the two
sides or come up with a third.’’58 Unfortunately, an excessive concern with the
‘‘rhetoric’’ of the Sophists leads to a conclusion that they were only concerned with
eristic strategies of turning the weaker argument into the stronger during isolated
moments of kairos that have neither history nor legacy. The removal of temporal
continuity, in other words, renders dissoi logoi a statement of almost paralyzing
cynicism, a world of Non-Being in which nothing stable or concrete can be grasped or
conveyed. Yet reinsert the notion of temporal continuity and dissoi logoi becomes a
doctrine of reasoned judgment that occurs through the dialectical engagement of
multiple views that are constantly being tested, rejected, modified, and embraced
through experimental action in a changing environment. As indicated by Poulakos’s
interpretation, dissoi logoi is not simply a statement that people disagree; rather, dissoi
logoi emphasizes that productive action must be preceded by thoughtful debate that
draws on the wealth of available knowledge to produce desirable results. It is a
proposition that people in a state of disagreement have the potential to come up with a
new hypothesis that might satisfy both parties if tested in cooperative action.
This experimental reading of dissoi logoi continues even in Plato’s reading of
Protagoras in both the Protagoras and the Theaetetus. In Plato’s recounting of the
‘‘Great Speech,’’ for instance, the mythic narrative spun by Protagoras recounts the
struggle of the human species for survival in a dangerous environment. Initially left
‘‘naked, unshod, unbedded, and unarmed,’’ they were only able to compete against the
more equipped animals after acquiring the practical arts from Prometheus.59 Yet it was
Hermes’ gift of the ‘‘art of politics’’ to all citizens and the corresponding virtues of
justice and respect that finally allowed them to found cities and advance toward
civilization.60 In the context of the Platonic dialogue, the explicit moral lesson is that
virtue can be taught; however, the implicit moral lesson is that the advance of human
civilization is contingent upon the ability to employ the arts (including the virtues) as
means of mastering contingency and overcoming obstacles. Socrates credits this
attitude to Protagoras in the Theaetetus, saying that Protagoras would likely profess
respect for any master of technê, regardless of whether he is a doctor, gardener, or
politician, labeling him ‘‘wise’’ who can make ‘‘wholesome things seem just to a city
instead of pernicious ones.’’61 For Protagoras, wisdom and truth are revealed in what is
produced in human experience through the temporal interaction of nature and the arts,
and wisdom is generated when novel arguments arise from a clash of perspectives
within a situated moment capable of focusing attention on a particular matter of
judgment.
 Sophistical Attitude and Invention of Rhetoric 37

Epistêmê: Theory as Perspective

Grounding the sophistical methods of invention in their professional attitude allows
us to address their approach toward epistêmê free of the terministic blinders of
dualistic epistemology; it allows us to recognize that for the Sophists, the ‘‘sciences’’
of their day were not competitors to be undermined but simply one of many
resources to be exploited. Indeed, it is only from within this experimental attitude
that we can understand the expansive scientific interests of the Sophists. Cicero notes
that Prodicus, Thrasymachus, and Protagoras all ‘‘spoke and wrote a great deal at that
time about the nature of the physical world.’’62 The Sophist Hippias alone*a reputed
polymath*was said to have lectured on ‘‘astronomy, mathematics and geometry,
genealogy, mythology and history, painting and sculpture, the function of letters,
syllables, rhythms and musical scales.’’63 Even Gorgias, the Sophist most aligned with
philosophical skepticism, was said to have argued that ‘‘the sun is a red-hot stone’’
and was shown on the tomb of Isocrates ‘‘looking at an astronomical globe.’’64 None
of this means that the Sophists saw themselves as scientists in the modern sense of the
word. It simply demonstrates their Promethean adoration for the arts that would
include what we now call ‘‘scientific’’ pursuits. We see this Promethean spirit in
Gorgias’s Defense of Palamedes when the mythic Greek hero defends his reputation by
appealing to his many inventions:
For who else would have made human life rich when it was poor, bringing order
out of disorder? Who else would have discovered military tactics, most important
for success? Or written laws, guardians of justice? Or writing, the instrument of
memory? Weights and measures, facilitators of commercial transactions? Number,
the guardian of possessions? Beacons, the strongest and swiftest messengers? Or,
finally, draughts, the painless pastime of leisure? (11a)
Notable of this defense is the way in which the inventions of military equipment,
weights and measures, and draughts are placed on an even scale with inventions in
written laws, letters, and numbers. It is this leveling of hierarchy in the arts that is most
characteristic of the sophistical attitude. For if one only interprets their interest in
‘‘science’’ at the level of cognition, one might conclude, with Dodds, that there is no
‘‘sharp line of distinction between sophistai and phusikoi (natural scientists).’’65
However, one must keep in mind the contextual circumstances of their speculations.
Whereas pre-Socratic speculation occurred largely in isolation by aristocratic
intellectuals who were discontent with the limitations of nomos, sophistical speculation
was performed in public by professional educators for the sake of enriching and guiding
experience. That Aristotle credits Protagoras with the refutation of geometers that ‘‘the
circle does not touch the ruler as a single point’’ is indicative of their attitude toward
speculation.66 For common perception, it is obvious that an actual circle and an actual
ruler intersect along a measurable space. If geometry is to be meaningful for life, its
terminology must be used to inform practices via a detour through abstraction rather
than merely to refute perception for its own sake.
Ironically, evidence that the Sophists drew creative inspiration from the sciences as
resources for invention comes from the very texts that are pointed to as proof of their
38 N. Crick
epistemological skepticism: Gorgias’s On Not Being and Encomium of Helen. In most
readings, On Not Being is taken to be a statement of nihilist metaphysics. This abolition
is then said to make way for his argument in Helen for logos as a ‘‘powerful master’’
(dynastês megas) (11). Put simply, by denying equally that anything exists, can be
apprehended, or can be communicated, Gorgias seems to leave the whole field of
human understanding to those capable of mastering the arts of logos that are alone
responsible for influencing the mind and thoughts of men. Consequently, we find him
in Helen making the following assertion:
How many men on how many subjects have persuaded and do persuade how many
others by shaping a false speech! For if all men on all subjects had memory of the
past, understanding of the present, and foresight into the future, speech would not
be the same in the same way; but as it is, to remember the past, to examine the
present, or to prophesy the future is not easy; and so most men on most subjects
make opinion an advisor to their minds. But opinion is perilous and uncertain, and
brings those who use it to perilous and uncertain good fortune. (11)
When combined with Plato’s claim that, for Gorgias, under the influence of rhetoric
‘‘all things are willingly but not forcibly made slaves,’’ these statements appear to
support a view of Gorgias as an educator of selfish tyrants in the mold of Callicles.67
However, this reading largely ignores the performative context of these discourses.
Poulakos suggests, for instance, that both of these texts may have had only a tangential
relationship to Gorgias’s actual views. More likely, Gorgias used them to display his
prowess with logos and was ‘‘content to have participated in the game of words, to have
demonstrated to his audience that he is a splendid player, and to have tried to bring
them into the game.’’68 Take, for example, his playful conclusion, which clearly marks
the text as an ‘‘amusement’’ (paignion) (11). Equally, On Not Being is clearly meant as a
parody of pre-Socratic logic that would be entertaining for those familiar with this form
of abstract reasoning. The playful reading of the text is supported by the historical
observation by Aelian that both ‘‘Hippias and Gorgias appeared in purple clothes.’’69 As
Consigny explains, purple robes were the traditional attitude of the rhapsodes who
would often take on distinctive roles in their dramatic performances, frequently for
‘‘comedic’’ effect.70 None of this denies that Gorgias likely also had serious intent in this
exposition; it only warns against reading the words of a consummate performer like
Gorgias without at least some sense of irony.
What can be said with some confidence, however, is that as a performer, Gorgias was
also a professional teacher and not simply an entertainer; his performances were meant
as displays of universal methods of reasoning and style that could be employed in any
particular case to advance new arguments that could win the day against a stronger
opponent. As an engraving on a statue dedicated in his honor declares,
No mortal has yet found a nobler profession (technē) than Gorgias:
To train the soul for the contests of aretē.
His statue stands in the vale of Apollo,
A tribute not to wealth, but to the piety of his character. (A8b)
 Sophistical Attitude and Invention of Rhetoric 39

The boast that Gorgias trained the soul is well attested, but less recognized is the
importance of the detail that the statue of Gorgias also stands in the vale of Apollo,
the god of wisdom and the arts. This often neglected part of the epitaph demonstrates
the piety that he likely showed toward the established fields of knowledge of his day.
After all, it was only through absorbing and reapplying that knowledge that one could
win contests of excellence. Even his seeming dismissal of the astronomers can be read in
terms of praise. He writes in Helen,
To see that persuasion, when added to speech, indeed molds the mind as it wishes,
one must first study the arguments of astronomers, who replace opinion with
opinion: displacing one but implanting another, they make incredible, invisible
matters apparent to the eyes of opinion. (11)
Although it is possible to interpret this passage as a skeptical assault on the possibility of
astronomical knowledge, the context of its performance actually encourages it to be
read as an indirect form of praise for the ability to make the impossible seem possible.
In this sense, Gorgias is actually honoring the tradition of the astronomers by trying to
acquit Helen of responsibility by a very technical treatise on the relationships between
perception, sight, emotion, the soul, reflective thought, art, and action. There is no
sense in which Gorgias rejects the value or legitimacy of scientific knowledge in Helen.
In fact, just as in On the Nonexistent, he imitates both the forms of reasoning and the
epistemological substance of the field of epistêmê in order to invent radical new
arguments out of what had become commonplace materials. To read these
performances as justifications to ignore or ridicule science or philosophy is to draw
the wrong conclusion; if anything, Gorgias proves in his performance that any serious
rhetor must have mastered all the intellectual theories of his age in order to come up
with novel perspectives*not only with regard to situated action but to logos itself.
Similarly, Schiappa observes,
In the case of Gorgias, one of the most important theoretical contributions of the
Helen is that it engaged in relatively systematic, secular, physical explanation and
description. Gorgias provides a serious account of the workings of logos and the
psyche. With respect to logos, Gorgias enumerates its qualities, describes its effects,
and explains how it works. The Helen is the earliest surviving extended discussion
of logos and certain the most sophisticated of his time.71
The sophistical attitude thus approaches the arts and sciences as resources for
rhetorical invention to master contingencies and reduce uncertainty in the midst of
conflict and turmoil. Gorgias’s notion that all who persuade do so by molding a false
argument can easily be read as saying that no argument can possibly account for all the
facts of a changing situation; but that does not condemn us to a life of discontinuous
improvisation. Clearly, the lesson of Helen, when read as a total performance, is that a
closer examination of the facts, aided by the insights of critical knowledge, can lead us
to a surer judgment. Similarly, after noting in Palamedes the impossibilities ‘‘to make
the truth of actions clear and evident to listeners through words,’’ he counsels patience
and further study conducted in a similar fashion to the preceding examination of the
evidence assisted by logos (11a). Combined with his interest in extemporaneous oratory
40 N. Crick
and his concern for the art of the ‘‘timely,’’ Gorgias conveys an attitude of cultivated
opportunism*of using all the available resources of knowledge to turn a kairotic
situation toward long-term benefit rather than ephemeral gratification.

Lexis: The Power of Form

Despite the attention paid to the Sophists’ epistemology, their greatest legacy is really
their artistic commitment to form, or what Kenneth Burke calls the ‘‘creation of an
appetite in the mind of the auditor, and the adequate satisfying of that appetite.’’72 The
Sophists understood that logos is a means of giving form to collective human experience
by bringing forth outstanding qualities in their common situation and narrating
possibilities by which emotional tensions can be brought to consummation. For
instance, when Gorgias made use of antithesis and rhythm in his speeches, he was said
to have ‘‘amazed’’ his audience, and Philostratus calls him an exemplar of ‘‘unexpected
expression and of inspiration and of the grand style for great subjects and of detached
phrases and transitions.’’73 Plato remarks that Thrasymachus ‘‘systematically mastered
tearful and moving speeches on old age and poverty,’’ and Hermias adds that he taught
that ‘‘one must arouse the juryman to sorrow and solicit his pity, bewailing one’s age,
poverty, children, and the like.’’74 With the appearance of the Sophists, logos became less
a vehicle for factual information and more a medium of form, or what Dewey calls ‘‘a
way of envisaging, of feeling, and of presenting experienced matter so that it most
readily and effectively becomes material for the construction of adequate experience on
the part of those less gifted than the original creator.’’75
Sophistical style was thus a result of the unique fusion of mythos and logos, of oral
narrative and logical argument, within a discursive symbolic form. Jarratt writes that,
although masters of logic, they equally emphasized the importance of employing a style
that ‘‘creates the effect of evolving in time, through sound striking the ears, minds,
bodies of its listeners in a temporal experience.’’76 In this way, the Sophists grounded
their logical analysis within narratives ‘‘offering a provisional explanation of a human
condition through time,’’ thus resulting in a novel form of discourse which suggested
‘‘new solutions to the problems of social organization posed by democracy.’’77 What
Plato later termed rhêtorikê was not so much a knack for flattery as it was the novel
production of a type of discourse capable of fusing logic with poetics to give form to the
collective experience of a citizenry in kairotic situations.
But fully recovering ‘‘rhetoric’’ from the Platonic legacy requires us to ground
sophistical style in their experimental attitude toward language and action. For
Gorgias, for instance, style is not something confined to the surfaces of things; style is
the culminating expression of thoughtful feeling that penetrates deep into an audience
and transforms their attitudes toward things and ideas in the world. Speaking of the
power of tragedy, for instance, Gorgias calls it a ‘‘deception in which the one who
deceives is more just than the one who does not, and the one who is deceived is wiser
than the one who is not’’ (23). In other words, ‘‘deception’’ (apate) is not a negative
thing; it only means that a person has willingly entered the universe of the artist in order
to absorb the universal meanings encompassed in its work. Similarly, rhetorical style
 Sophistical Attitude and Invention of Rhetoric 41

functions as an invitation to an audience that enters the universe of the rhetor if only to
step out of the familiar and limited universe of their everyday lives in order to
experiment with a new perspective by fully*if only temporarily*immersing
themselves within it. Sophistical style as ‘‘form’’ thus provides an audience with what
Burke calls a ‘‘point of view’’ that discloses new possibilities in the world. This does not
mean that this possibility is correct, of course. Burke writes,
The point of view requires an interpretation of events, a reading of the recalcitrant
factors favorable and unfavorable to the point of view. But an interpretation can be
wrong. Hence a point of view introduces the possibility of error. But where there is
the possibility of a wrong interpretation, there is also the possibility of a right one.
The freedom to err argues a freedom to be right.78
In many ways, Burke’s analysis of ‘‘point of view’’ sums up the core spirit of the
sophistical attitude. This attitude is marked by a respect for the diversity and reality of
human experience as reflected in the multiplicity of logoi, an instrumental view of
theory rooted in a valorization of technê, a methodological concern for constituting
virtue and self-sufficiency in both public and private affairs, and an experimental stance
toward logos that viewed both style and substance as means of transforming a shared
environment through interaction over a temporal horizon. But to accept this
experimentalist reading of the Sophists is to alter dramatically their significance in
the history of Western thought. Instead of being seen as radical outsiders, inspiring
revolutionaries, dangerous skeptics, or cynical opportunists, they take on the status of
the first class of democratic professionals to bridge the divide between theory and
practice by developing a radical new democratic discourse known as rhetoric.79
The democratic potential of such an invention should not be underestimated. In
Dewey’s terms, the Sophists discovered a method of bridging the instrumental (or
‘‘logical’’) and consummatory (or ‘‘aesthetic’’) qualities of language within a single
discursive form capable of generating common action in response to a shared exigence.
For Jarratt, these qualities of sophistical practice ‘‘promoted the democratic process of
group decision-making on which our own democracy still rests.’’80 Dewey elaborates,
For there is no mode of action as fulfilling and as rewarding as is concerted
consensus of action. It brings with it the sense of sharing and merging in a whole.
Forms of language are unrivalled in ability to create this sense, at first with direct
participation on the part of an audience; and then, as literary forms develop,
through imaginative identification.81
What makes this progressive development of discursive form uniquely democratic is
that it opens the possibility of a political system based on a power of the promise rather
than the command. Insofar as sophistical training focused on the citizen’s ability to
encourage voluntary action in others through logos, it contributed to the cultivation of
what Hannah Arendt calls the ‘‘political realm, which is the public sphere in which
everybody can appear and show who he himself is.’’82 The great accomplishment of the
Sophists was to adopt an experimental method toward language that allowed them to
channel the logical power of abstract thought through novel poetic forms and to
generate the possibility for political action capable of bringing forth reward and
42 N. Crick
fulfillment in the shared life of the polis. It thus falls to the inheritors of the sophistical
tradition*the democratic educators in logos*to continue down this road of
rediscovery and reinvention in the creative and disciplined labor of making a ‘‘better’’
world out of the materials of the one we have inherited.

Notes
[1] John Dewey, Experience and Nature, 2nd ed. (New York: Dover, 1958), 126.
[2] G. B. Kerferd, The Sophistic Movement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 15.
[3] Edward Schiappa, Protagoras and Logos: A Study in Greek Philosophy and Rhetoric (Columbia:
University of South Carolina Press, 2003), 30.
[4] Eric A. Havelock, The Liberal Temper in Greek Politics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1957), 60.
[5] Michael Gagarin, ‘‘Did the Sophists Aim to Persuade?’’ Rhetorica 19 (2001): 289.
[6] Schiappa, Protagoras and Logos, 41.
[7] Susan C. Jarratt, Rereading the Sophists: Classical Rhetoric Refigured (Carbondale: Southern
Illinois University Press, 1991), 98.
[8] Scott Consigny, Gorgias: Sophist and Artist (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press,
2001), 209. The problem with this formulation is that during the Classical Age of Greece, the
Sophists were largely without rival in their professional capacity. Indeed, it would be more
accurate to say that the primary competitors of men like Gorgias were not foundationalist
philosophers but other Sophists.
[9] W. K. C. Guthrie, The Sophists (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), 186.
[10] Christopher Lyle Johnstone, ‘‘Sophistical Wisdom: Politikê Aretê and ‘Logosophia,’’’
Philosophy and Rhetoric 39 (2006): 282.
[11] Johnstone, ‘‘Sophistical Wisdom,’’ 282.
[12] See Plato, Sophist, trans. Nicholas P. White, in Plato: Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper
(Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 1997), 231ce, 254a.
[13] On the question of whether the Sophists were skeptics, see Richard Bett, ‘‘The Sophists and
Relativism,’’ Phronesis 34 (1989): 13969.
[14] For instance, Schiappa suggests that because of their diversity of thought and practice, ‘‘the
Sophists deserve study as individual thinkers and not simply as a movement.’’ Consequently,
Schiappa restricts the term ‘‘Sophist’’ to refer ‘‘specifically to those first professional
educators who, more often than not, are associated with the technê (art or skill) of prose
speech’’ (Protagoras and Logos, 12). Additionally, McComiskey narrows this definition even
further, calling the Sophists simply ‘‘wise men with widely varying epistemological beliefs
and political commitments.’’ Bruce McComiskey, Gorgias and the New Sophistic Rhetoric
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2002), 6.
[15] Jarratt, Rereading the Sophists, 117.
[16] On the notion of the Sophist as public intellectual, see Nathan Crick, ‘‘Rhetoric, Philosophy,
and the Public Intellectual,’’ Philosophy and Rhetoric 39 (2006): 12739.
[17] This argument continues a line of thought in Nathan Crick, ‘‘‘A Capital and Novel
Argument’: Charles Darwin’s Notebooks and the Productivity of Rhetorical Consciousness,’’
Quarterly Journal of Speech 91 (2005): 33764.
[18] Eduard Zeller, Outlines of the History of Greek Philosophy (Cleveland, OH: World Publishing
Company, 1931), 94.
[19] W. K. C. Guthrie, The Greek Philosophers: From Thales to Aristotle (New York: Harper and
Row, 1960), 66. An interesting case of ‘‘taking sides’’ in this binary is the work of British
utilitarian George Grote, who takes great pains to emphasize that the Sophists did not
represent a philosophical school but a professional class. Grote denies that there were any
 Sophistical Attitude and Invention of Rhetoric 43

‘‘common doctrines, or principles, or method, belonging to them,’’ instead emphasizing that

their commonality derived from their shared goal, as paid teachers, to prepare young men
eager for power and prestige in the new democratic empire ‘‘to think, speak, and act.’’ George
Grote, History of Greece, vol. 8 (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1869), 370.
[20] All references to original Sophistical fragments will be cited directly in the text using the
original numbering of H. Diels and W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, as compiled
and translated in Michael Gagarin and Paul Woodruff, trans. and ed., Early Greek Political
Thought from Homer to the Sophists (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
[21] Bruno Latour offers a fine image of the so-called solution to the problem of dualism, which
is to rapidly move back and forth between two opposing poles without altering the basic
framework. He writes, ‘‘With circular gestures of the two hands turning faster and faster in
opposite directions, it is possible to give an appearance of smooth reason to a connection
between two sites whose existence remains as problematic as before.’’ What applies in
Latour’s case to the ‘‘actor/system’’ and the ‘‘micro/macro’’ debates applies equally to the
‘‘mind/body’’ debate. Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-
Network-Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 169.
[22] Kenneth Burke, Counter-Statement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 150.
[23] Burke, Counter-Statement, 150.
[24] Kenneth Burke, The Philosophy of Literary Form (New York: Vintage, 1957), 125.
[25] Burke, Philosophy of Literary Form, 112.
[26] Burke, Counter-Statement, 183.
[27] Jarratt, Rereading the Sophists, 110.
[28] Martin Heidegger, ‘‘The Question Concerning Technology,’’ in Basic Writings from Being and
Time (1927) to The Task of Thinking (1964), ed. David Farrell Krell (New York: Harper &
Row, 1977), 294.
[29] Heidegger, ‘‘Question Concerning Technology,’’ 293.
[30] Zeller, Outlines of the History, 19.
[31] Guthrie, Greek Philosophers, 24.
[32] Dewey, Experience and Nature, 93.
[33] Dewey, Experience and Nature, 125.
[34] Dewey, Experience and Nature, 125.
[35] The reflective and abstract character of the pre-Socratics was probably itself a reflection of
the new Greek literacy. As Marshall McLuhan puts it, ‘‘[o]ral cultures act and react at the
same time. Phonetic culture endows men with the means of repressing their feelings and
emotions when engaged in action. To act without reacting, without involvement, is the
peculiar advantage of the Western man.’’ In this way, the difference between the pre-Socratic
and Sophistical attitudes corresponds to the difference between those in a literate culture
who value their skill in contemplation as an intrinsic good and those who value
contemplation as a form of delayed action. See Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media:
The Extensions of Man (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994), 86.
[36] John Poulakos, Sophistical Rhetoric in Classical Greece (Columbia: University of South
Carolina Press, 1995), 13.
[37] Dewey, Experience and Nature, 150.
[38] The ‘‘working-class’’ ethos of the Sophists is indicated by the curious*even if fictitious*
biographical detail that Protagoras ‘‘used to be a porter’’ and was witnessed by Democritus
‘‘tying up bundles of wood.’’ Aristotle also credits him with having ‘‘invented as well the so-
called shoulder pad, on which porters carry their loads.’’ Rosamond Kent Sprague, ed., The
Older Sophists: A Complete Translation by Several Hands of the Fragments in Die Fragmente
der Vorsokratiker, Edited by Diels-Kranz with a New Edition of Antiphon and of Euthydemus
(Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1972, 80A.1. (For common reference, many
of the classical interpreters of the Sophists will be cited from this source using Sprague’s
numbering. Any such references, of course, should be read with appropriate skepticism
44 N. Crick
regarding their accuracy, as some were made hundreds of years subsequent to the sophistical
era.) More than any other example, this shows how closely aligned were the Sophists with the
attitude of the artisan*indeed, even the common laborer*who dwelled in the contingent
world of adapting means to ends and ends to means. Regardless of the actual truth of the
story, the fact of its existence demonstrates something about the sophistical ethos. Nobody
would ever believe, after all, that Plato or Aristotle would have lowered themselves to finding
methods of making labor less laborious.
[39] As indicated by Steven Mailloux, it is perhaps more appropriate to credit F. C. S. Schiller
with this acknowledgement. For it was Schiller who first began to turn away from the
‘‘negative, skeptical interpretation’’ of the Sophists and toward a view that sees them ‘‘arguing
positively for the human origin of truth and thus affirming, not rejecting, mankind’s ability
to know it.’’ Steven Mailloux, ‘‘Introduction: Sophistry and Rhetorical Pragmatism,’’ in
Rhetoric, Sophistry, Pragmatism, ed. Steven Mailloux (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1995), 9; see also F. C. S. Schiller, Studies in Humanism (New York: Macmillan, 1907).
[40] Dewey, Experience and Nature, 126.
[41] John Dewey, Logic*The Theory of Inquiry (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1938), 72.
[42] It is surprising that even such an astute critic such as Jacques Ellul writes the Sophists out of
his history of technology. According to Ellul, the Greeks never were able to bridge science
and technology because they believed that ‘‘technical research was considered unworthy of
the intellect, and that the goal of science was not application but contemplation.’’ This may
have been true for Plato and many pre-Socratics, but it was most definitely not accurate for
the Sophists. See Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society, trans. John Wilkinson (New York:
Vintage, 1964), 28.
[43] Sprague, Older Sophists, 86A.1, 86A.12.
[44] Gagarin and Woodruff, Early Greek Political Thought, 292.
[45] Sprague, Older Sophists, 82A.1.
[46] Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 29.
[47] Alain Badiou, Conditions, trans. Steven Corcoran (New York: Continuum International
Publishing Group, 2008), 20.
[48] Sprague, Older Sophists, 84A.19.
[49] Gagarin and Woodruff, Early Greek Political Thought, 187.
[50] Schiappa, Protagoras and Logos, 162.
[51] Michael Leff, ‘‘The Idea of Rhetoric as Interpretive Practice: A Humanist’s Response to
Gaonkar,’’ in Rhetorical Hermeneutics: Invention and Interpretation in the Age of Science, ed.
Alan G. Gross and William M. Keith (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 97.
[52] Leff, ‘‘Idea of Rhetoric,’’ 97.
[53] Plato, Protagoras, trans. Stanley Lombardo and Karen Bell, in Plato: Complete Works, ed. John
M. Cooper (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 1997), 339a.
[54] Leff, ‘‘Idea of Rhetoric,’’ 97.
[55] Sprague, Older Sophists, 82A.1a.
[56] Sprague, Older Sophists, 86A.12.
[57] Sprague, Older Sophists, 86B.6.
[58] Poulakos, Sophistical Rhetoric, 58.
[59] Plato, Protagoras, 321cd.
[60] Plato, Protagoras, 322bc.
[61] Plato, Theaetetus, trans. M.J. Levett, Myles Burneat, in Plato: Complete Works, ed. John M.
Cooper (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 1997), 167c.
[62] Sprague, Older Sophists, 85A.9.
[63] Kerferd, Sophistic Movement, 47.
[64] Sprague, Older Sophists, 82B.31 (from Sopater), 82A.17 (from Plutarch).
[65] E. R. Dodds, The Ancient Concept of Progress and Other Essays on Greek Literature and Belief
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), 94.
 Sophistical Attitude and Invention of Rhetoric 45

[66] Gagarin and Woodruff, Early Greek Political Thought, 187.

[67] Sprague, Older Sophists, 82A.26.
[68] Poulakos, Sophistical Rhetoric, 67.
[69] Sprague, Older Sophists, 82A.9.
[70] Consigny, Gorgias, 167.
[71] Edward Schiappa, The Beginnings of Rhetorical Theory in Classical Greece (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 1999), 12627.
[72] Burke, Counter-Statement, 31.
[73] Sprague, Older Sophists, 82A.1.
[74] Sprague, Older Sophists, 85B.6.
[75] John Dewey, Art as Experience (New York: Penguin, 1934), 11314.
[76] Jarratt, Rereading the Sophists, 27.
[77] Jarratt, Rereading the Sophists, 51.
[78] Kenneth Burke, Permanence and Change: An Anatomy of Purpose, 3rd ed. (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1984), 257n.
[79] Identifying the experimental tenor of the sophistical attitude also helps clarify the meaning
and legacy of the term ‘‘Sophist.’’ First, it clearly denies Xeniades and Critias the label
‘‘Sophist.’’ From what little we know of Xeniades, he appears nothing more than a radical
skeptic who believed that ‘‘everything is false’’ and that ‘‘every sense-image and opinion lie’’
(Sprague, Older Sophists, 81). Critias, meanwhile, appears to have been classified a Sophist
primarily because he was a poet who concerned himself with politics. However, nothing in
his fragments demonstrates that he was ever a professional teacher or was concerned at all
with anyone’s affairs but his own. Indeed, when he came to power as a member of the Thirty
he actually included in the laws ‘‘a provision against teaching the art of speech’’ (Sprague,
Older Sophists, 88A.4). If a selfish tyrant who bans education and independent thought can
be classified a Sophist simply because he wrote plays, then the term has almost no meaning.
Second, the experimental reading of the Sophists clearly places Isocrates within their
tradition insofar as he taught his students the ability to adapt the best available knowledge,
particularly the knowledge of history and precedent, to changing circumstances of the
present. See Takis Poulakos, Speaking for the Polis: Isocrates’ Rhetorical Education (Columbia:
University of South Carolina Press, 1997).
[80] Jarratt, Rereading the Sophists, 107.
[81] Dewey, Experience and Nature, 184.
[82] Hannah Arendt, The Promise of Politics, ed. Jerome Kohn (New York: Schocken Books, 2005),
14. Arendt also opens the possibility that Socrates, too, is a Sophist: ‘‘If the quintessence of
the Sophists’ teaching consisted in the dyo logoi, in the insistence that each matter can be
talked about in two different ways, then Socrates was the greatest Sophist of them all. For he
thought that there are, or should be, as many different logoi as there are men, and that all
these logoi together form the human world, insofar as men live together in the manner of
speech’’ (19).
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