The Sophists: Education and Politics

How are education and freedom and power and wealth related?

You might want read the Encylcopedia of Philosophy's entry on the sophists first.

In an oligarchic society (rule by wealthy), social order is maintained by force, by armed guards and the threat of violence, but this potentially brutal form of social order is rationalized by mythology. The tyrant forestalls the use of violence by charisma, guile, and strategy, while those around him construct stories about the past in order to rationalize his and their place in the social order.At the risk of destroying my professoiral ethos, and showing how old I am, a local 90's Southern rock band once rather nicely summed up the rhetoric of oligarchy with the expression, "Mother American is brandishing her weapons. She keeps us safe and warm with threats and misconceptions." (Drivin' n Cryin) Thus one high-ranking member of the tyrant's inner circle might associate himself with a great event, brave participation in a war, or valuable council, while another might claim to have a relative who was present when the city was founded. In the HBO series Rome, for example, the character Atia, Brutus's mother, says the seven hills of Rome are made up of the bones of her ancestors. The tyrant himself might claim a supernatural lineage. Collectively they construct a history of the state and a religion of the people that justifies (or at least attempts to justify) the current political situation. The role of education in such a world is to perpetuate the consistent inheritance of power from generation to generation. In order to ensure the persistence of the status quo, oligarchies carefully control who is allowed to speak, about what, how, when, and where. Thus the role of rhetoric in an oligarchic society is to maintain remote control.

In a democratic society like the kind that existed in Athens after Pericles (495 - 429) reformed the constitution (see Hansen, The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes), social order is maintained by promises of equal opportunity for all. The failures of any group or individual are rationalized by bad luck and incompetence. To maintain a democratic social order, the natural or divine rights of any group or individual must be denied and the promises of success celebrated by myths of self-creation. The role of education in a democracy is to lure people with promises of wealth and power and to equip everyone with at least the apparent tools of success. A democratic state must also guard against any one group's seizing advantage for itself (or failing that, getting caught). By creating a climate of continual change, by creating and destroying heroes daily, as it were, democratic education forestalls the construction of rationalizations that would support the creation of a single and permanent ruling class. Thus the role of rhetoric in a democratic society is to perpetuate democracy, the free-for-all scramble for momentary individual dominance in the market place. The political conflict between oligarchy and democracy in 5^th century Athens, attended by conflicting pedagogies, created a tension that permanently inscribed rhetorical instruction.

The intellectual impetus for a democratic form of education was provided in 5th century Athens by men like Protagoras, Prodicus, Hippias, Thracymacus, and Gorgias. These men were called sophists. The word sophist originally meant a wise person or one who has knowledge of a trade or craft. It was perhaps this second association with craft and trade, with a living made in public, that lead Plato, with his oligarchic and agrarian sympathies, to denigrate the word. At any rate, while historically the sophists go by one name, they were not in fact a unified body of thinkers. They did not form schools. They did not teach according to a standard curriculum; they did not always teach in the same place, and they competed with each other for audiences. While they did not offer a set course of lectures, or, as far as we can tell from the fragmentary evidence left us, offer much in the way of theoretical advice, many did distribute collections of their own speeches that other people could use as models. In general, however, the sophists made a living by giving public lecture, astounding people with their loquacity, their ingenuity, their memories, some would say their shamelessness, and then offering to teach others this art for a fee.

It was said of one sophist that he once recited a lengthy speech while a note-taker took the words down verbatim, and then the sophist repeated the speech, word for word, pause for pause. Gorgias claimed to be able to speak at length on any subject extemporaneously, and wowed young men by taking on all comers, while Demosthenes (who was not really a sophist because he was a citizen while the sophists were foreigners or metics) exemplified sophistic attitudes towards dynamic performance when for a particular trial he wrote the speeches for both the prosecution and the defense. Protagoras was, some people claim, expelled from the city and his books burnt for his blasphemous teachings -- he argued not only that man was the measure of all things, but also that as to whether or not the gods existed he knew neither whether they did or did not. Protagoras was the first to say that on every point there are two equal and opposite opinions. He was also the first to advocate what has become (if there is one) the primary rhetorical dictum: argue both sides of the case. Gorgias offered a related piece of advice, that one must counter seriousness with laughter and laughter with seriousness. All sophists since have been accused in one way or another of tergiversation, of arguing both sides of the case at once. The most damning indictment of the sophists was that they taught people how to make the worse case appear the better. or the weaker case the stronger To pervert the truth is certainly a reprehensible activity, and to teach others how to pervert the truth is scandalous, an act from which the destruction of an entire civilization might descend, but the sophists, apparently, did not believe that humanity could fathom the absolute truth: it seems they did not think that a person could be certain which case was better and which case was worse. From this perspective, at least, they could not be fairly accused of perverting anything.

If there is one thing that characterized the sophists collectively, it was the fact that they charged a fee for their instruction and would let anyone with money listen to them. Plato found this practice disgraceful, as did others, perhaps because it seemed promiscuous. Knowledge was powerful and one did not just distribute power to any one who had enough money to pay for it. you could argue the opposite: That charging a fee was bad because it kept those who couldn't afford the fee from getting an education. Isocrates argued that the sophists weren't charging enough.Some of the sophists, Protagoras most notably, believed that virtue could be taught and claimed that they were not just teaching the rabble to spellbind the mob, but rather were improving the polis by improving its people. This too did not sit well with many. For one thing, it was extremely debatable whether you could teach anyone to be a good citizen. Is good citizen the same as good person? Is patriotism today's "good citizen"? And even if you could teach a person to be a good citizen, would that make them a good leader or a good follower? If you taught everyone equally to be equally powerful, what kind of chaos would that bring? Give everyone a gun and instruction in how to use it. Many people believed that great leaders were born, not made, and thus that education had to be handed down from the leaders to their children. In fact, the issue of whether rhetorical training could improve an individual, in what ways, and for which individuals, remains a staple of rhetorical pedagogy, just as mistrust and misunderstanding dog today's rhetoricians.

So when the sophists appeared in Athens and began proselytizing the virtues and powers of education for the masses, agnosticism, and multiple truths, they were threatening the attitudes and beliefs that sanctioned a hierarchical social order. The oligarchs were predictably disturbed. The sophists were also suspected of anti-Athenian sentiments and activities because they were metics, free men who were welcome to work in Athens but only if they were sponsored by a citizen. They could not participate in politics or law, or own property, or marry an Athenian; yet they were required to serve in the military. Metics were also required to pay an annual tax for the privilege of living in Athens. They were, in other words, excluded, and because they were excluded, they were distrusted. In 404 bce, when the tyranny of the thirty overthrew the radical democracy, the sophists were expelled from Athens. Five years earlier, in 399, Socrates himself was executed for pedagogical crimes.