The biography of the sophists
The new orientation of the sophistication in comparison with the pre -graphics consisted in exceptional interest in a person and society and almost complete ignoring of natural philosophical problems. The main works of the Sophists have not reached us, they can be judged mainly by the works of their opponents - Plato and Aristotle. The next generation of the younger ones includes Lycofron, Alkidamant, Fragmach.
Sophists saw their main pedagogical and educational task in the upbringing of the “virtue” of Arena and the “ability to speak well”, which implied a acquaintance with the basics of history, law, theoretical disciplines, that is the common feature of their teachings, which found a classical expression in the position of Protagoras “Man is a measure of all things”: this meant the rejection of the criteria Truthfulness, absolutization of any particular opinion and justification of intellectual arbitrariness.
The consolidation of the absence of absolute truth and objective values was facilitated by the method of comparing conflicting civilian norms and religious rites that dominated in various peoples widely used by sophists. The contrast between nature and law played the most important role, where nature performed the function of an element of objective and constant, and the law established by the arbitrariness of people who are in power - an element of changeable and arbitrary.
Protagor made the first attempts to systematize the techniques of conclusion. Lycofron analyzed the role of the ligament “is” in the proposal. Protagor, according to tradition, laid the foundation for verbal competitions, in which many sophists resorted to logical overexposure and paradoxes, which already received the name “Sophisms” in ancient times; He introduced into practice Comrade Gorgias and other sophists developed the teaching of oratory, laid the foundations of the science of language.
Protagor was engaged in the categories of phenomenon and sentence syntax. The diarrhea has developed the basis of the doctrine of synonym. In the socio-political areas, they were supporters of democracy and expressed the ideas of the equality of all people. Alkidamant said that "God made everyone free, nature did not make anyone a slave." Sophists inevitably contradicted with traditional religious beliefs.
So, Protagor claimed that he did not know whether the gods exist. Frysimas believed that the gods did not pay attention to people. The diet saw the origins of religion in the veneration of bread and wine, the sun, the moon and rivers - everything that is necessary to maintain life. Critius, who at the head of the Government of “30 tyrants” in Athens after defeat in the Peloponnesian war, in the essay, Sisif declared religion to fiction that forces people to observe laws and holding from secret crimes due to fear of the omnipotent deity.
Sophists were not united institutionally within the framework of a certain “school”, their views were not distinguished by unity even on basic issues. While the "Anonymous Yamvlikha" the author of the text, known for the extension of Yamvlikh, considered the laws the basis of the normal existence of people, the Antifont announced state establishments of evil.
Lycofron assigned the role of the guarantor of personal rights of citizens Aristotle. Politics III 9, B8, and the fracymes, according to Plato, claimed that the rulers everywhere impose Plato's advantageous laws for themselves. State, BC. Nevertheless, the consolidation of various thinkers around a certain complex of ideas allows you to fix the beginning, and the end of the popularity of the same complex of ideas allows you to determine the final moment of the history of movement.
Due to the strengthening in Athens of the conservative mindset after defeat in the Peloponnesian war, the educational rationalism of Sophism lost the broad social support that he used at the time of his heyday. The further development of many ideas discussed or only outlined by Greek sophistics took place in Socratic schools, especially in philosophical schools in Plato and Aristotle.
Fragments: Makoveelsky A. Sophist, h.