THE NEW TEACHERS

⊕ Protagoras of Abdera.
Most famous of the 5th BCE century Sophists.

Gorgias of Leontini.
Famous orator, teacher of rhetoric, and younger contemporary of Protagoras.

Hippias of Elis.
Younger contemporary of Socrates.

Prodicus of Ceos.
Contemporary of Socrates. He is mentioned in several dialogues but most frequently in the Protagoras.

Callicles.
He is unknown outside Plato's Gorgias.


"For this man Gorgias, the sophist (σοφιστὴς) from Leontini, came here from home in the public capacity of envoy, as being best able of all the citizens of Leontini to attend to the interests of the community, and it was the general opinion that he spoke excellently in the public assembly, and in his private capacity, by giving exhibitions and associating with the young, he earned and received a great deal of money from this city. Or, if you like, our friend here, Prodicus, often went to other places in a public capacity, and the last time, just lately, when he came here in a public capacity from Ceos, he gained great reputation by his speaking before the Council, and in his private capacity, by giving exhibitions and associating with the young, he received a marvelous sum of money. None of the ancients ever thought it right to exact the money as payment for his wisdom or to give exhibitions among people of various places; so simple-minded were they, and so unconscious of the fact that money is of the greatest value. But either of these two has earned more money from his wisdom than any artisan from his art. And even before these Protagoras did the same" (Hippias Major 282b).

"I know of one man, Protagoras, who amassed more money by his craft than Pheidias—so famous for the noble works he produced—or any ten other sculptors" (Meno 91d). Before we turn to the middle dialogues, we are going to look at two dialogues named for prominent figures in the new education that had become fashionable in Athens.

These dialogues are the Protagoras and the Gorgias.

To show how he understands the shortcoming in the conception of the competency in living the good life he associates with the new education, Plato has Socrates question Protagoras and Gorgias. The historical figures appeared to many to teach virtue, but Plato thought that this appearance was an illusion and that in fact they were a danger to their students and to Athens. He makes Socrates describe them as salesman with no real interest in whether what they teach helps their students do what is good and avoid what is bad as they live their lives.

Plato in this way highlights what he takes Socrates to believe about the good life: that living this life is completely a matter of knowing what is good and what is bad.

The Rise of the New Education

The primary question in both the Protagoras and the Gorgias is what the new education does to the students. Protagoras and Gorgias say it benefits them. The question is whether this is true.

Protagoras Professes to Make Men Better

Protagoras says to Socrates, "I am a sophist (σοφιστὴς) and educate men" (Protagoras 317b).

The Sophists were itinerant teachers, primarily of rhetoric but also of other subjects. Many came to Athens from other cities as part of political embassies (whose function was to negotiate on behalf of their home cities). Athens had become rich and powerful, and the sons of the aristocracy realized that in the law courts and elsewhere, the traditional education was no match for the ability in rhetorical persuasion the Sophists possessed and taught for a fee.

Hippocrates is a prospective student. He is from a "great and prosperous family" (Protagoras 316b) and, he wants Socrates to introduce him to Protagoras. Together they go to the house where Protagoras is staying, but Socrates does not hand Hippocrates over straightaway. He tells Protagoras that Hippocrates wants to know what he will get from becoming his student. In reply, Protagoras tells Hippocrates that "you will gain this by coming to my classes, that on the day when you join them you will go home a better man, and on the day after it will be the same; every day you will constantly improve more and more" (Protagoras 318a).

It is hard not to hear it as the pitch of a snake oil salesman, but Socrates is polite. He explains to Protagoras that the student of painting will get better at painting and others similarly and that Protagoras should say what he does for his students that makes them "better men."

In reply to Socrates, Protagoras explains that he teaches "good judgement, showing [his studens] how best to order [their] own home[s]; and in the affairs of the city, showing how [they] may have the most influence in political debate and negotiating" (Protagoras 318e).

Socrates takes Protagoras to mean that he teaches virtue (Protagoras 319a).

Gorgias Professes to Teach the Greatest Good

In the Gorgias, Socrates faces three interlocutors one after the other. ⊕ This difference in dramatic structure from earlier dialogues suggests the Gorigias is late among the early dialogues.

The first interlocutor is Gorgias.

He is a famous rhetor and teacher of rhetoric. Socrates seeks him out to find out what power rhetoric is (Gorgias 447c). He wants to know rhetoric benefits someone who possesses it.

Gorgias tells Socrates that the power concerns “the greatest of human concerns and the best" (Gorigias 451d). Socrates takes him to be talking about the “greatest good for men” (Gorigias 452c) and asks him what this “greatest good” is that rhetoric has the power to provide. In reply, Gorgias says it "is the source of freedom for mankind itself and at the same time it is for each the source of rule over others in one’s own city" (Gorgias 452d).

Socrates takes Gorgias to mean that rhetoric is the power to live the good life.

What They Teach their Students

Protagoras and Gorgias teach something and became rich doing it, but Plato doubts they teach virtue and how to live the good life. What they teach, he thinks, is how to get what one wants.

Plato thinks that knowing how to get what one wants, without knowledge of whether it is good or bad, was the cause of Athens's political downfall. He writes after the immense power and wealth of Periclean Athens had been dissipated in the Peloponnesian War, ⊕ Pericles (495-429 BCE) turned the Delian League into an Athenian Empire and also led Athens as a "general" or στρατηγός in the initial years of the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BCE). He promoted democracy, the arts, and public building projects, including the Parthenon, but the war was long and devastated Athens. Never again did the city regain its position of prominence in the ancient world. but he does not share the nostalgia many had for the leadership of Pericles and the life that was lost. He thinks that Pericles and the politicians failed the Athenians because they engaged in the practice the Sophists and teachers of rhetoric managed to package and sell at the expense of their students.

⊕

"They many say that these politicians have made the city [of Athens] great, but that the city is swollen and festering, thanks to those early leaders, they did not notice. For the politicians filled the city with harbors and dockyards, walls, and tribute payments and such trash as that, but did so without justice and temperance. So when the fit of sickness comes on, they will blame their advisors of the moment and sing the praises of Themistocles and Cimon and Pericles, the early politcians who are to blame for their ills" ⊕ Themistocles and Cimon, Athenian politicians and generals. (Gorgias 518e).

The politicians use rhetoric to get the city to take certain actions. They do this for "money, and reputation, and public honor," and the Peloponnesian War showed that this was a disaster.

Contrary to what many prominent Athenians believed, Socrates did not help cause of the Athenian downfall. The cause was false beliefs about what is good and what is bad.

Rhetoric is a Trick learned in Experience

⊕ An ἐπίδειξις is an "exhibition, display."

In the Helen, Gorgias tries to persuade his audience that Helen is not to be blamed for the Trojan War despite the fact that her adultery and flight with Paris was the cause.







Polus (one of Gorgias's followers) describes rhetoric as an "art" and something its practitioners learn from experience.

"[T]here are many arts (τέχναι) among men that have been discovered experimentally, as the result of experiences: for experience (ἐμπειρία) conducts the course of our life according to art, but inexperience according to chance. Of these several arts various men partake in various ways, and the best men of the best. Gorgias here, is one of these men, and he shares in the finest of the arts" (Gorgias 448c). What the historical Protagoras wrote has been almost completely lost, but two of the historical Gorgias's "epideictic" speeches (Helen and Palamedes) have been preserved in their entirety.

⊕ The Helen shows that Gorgias had the conception of rhetoric Socrates attributes to him.

Socrates says that rhetoric is a practice “for producing a certain gratification and pleasure” (Gorgias 462c). This seems to be what Gorgias meant when he said that “incantations …by means of speeches are bringers of pleasure and removers of pain” and that the “incantation, when it is conjoined with the opinion of the soul, beguiles it, persuades it” (Helen 10).

Socrates says that rhetoric is something the orators learned from experience (Gorgias 462b). ⊕ The historical Gorgias said that "just as some drugs draw some fluids out of the body, and others other ones, ... in the same way some speeches cause pain, others pleasure, others fear" (Helen 14). He means that the orator learns his trade from experience, like the doctor. The orator notices how different speeches cause the soul to change in various ways, just as the doctor learns by noticing how different drugs cause the body to change in various ways.

This makes the rhetorical tradition opposed to the philosophical tradition.

Since the time of Parmenides, experience was associated with the weight of tradition. Socrates uses reason to know which pleasures and pains are good and which are bad.

The New Teachers are Frauds

⊕ The ordinary Athenians saw no difference between Socrates, Protagoras, and Gorgias. To them, they were all part of the same new education that threatened the traditional way of life.

In the Protagoras and Gorgias, to distinguish Socrates from the new teachers, Plato makes Protagoras and Gorgias contradict themselves in questioning from Socrates. This shows that they are in no position to teach what they claim to teach and that Hippocrates and others should think twice before they become their students.

Socrates makes this point with a certain amount of sarcasm in the Apology.

"[I]f you have heard that I undertake to teach people and that I make money by it, that is not true. Although this seems to me to be a fine thing, if one might be able to teach people, as Gorgias of Leontini and Prodicus of Ceos and Hippias of Elis are. For each of these men can go into any one city and persuade the young men, who can associate for nothing with whomsoever they wish among their own fellow citizens, to give up the association with those men and to associate with them and pay them money and be grateful besides" (Apology 19d).

In the Protagoras, which is the subject of the next lecture, Protagoras has come to Athens.

Perseus Digital Library

Isocrates's, Against the Sophists, Antidosis

Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon

ἐμπειρέω, verb, empeireō, "to be experienced in, have knowledge of"
ἐμπειρία,, empeiria, noun, "experience"
ἐμπειρικός, empeirikos, adjective, "experience"
ἔμπειρος, empeiros, adjective, "experienced or practised in a thing, acquainted with it"
ἐμπείρως, empeirōs, adverb, "by experience"
ρητορική, rētorikē, noun, "rhetoric"
τέχνη, technē,, noun, "art, skill"

Arizona State University Library. Loeb Classical Library:
Early Greek Philosophy, Volume VIII: Sophists, Part 1