Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates, 3rd ed. Volume 2

“Here then” (concludes Sokrates), “we come to a dead lock: we can find no issue.38 We cannot discover what the regal art does for us or gives us: yet this is the art which is to make us happy.” In this difficulty, Sokrates turns to the two Sophists, and implores their help. The contrast between him and them is thus brought out.

The argument of Sokrates, which I have thus abridged from the Euthydêmus, arrives at no solution: but it is nevertheless eminently suggestive, and puts the question in a way to receive solution. What is the regal or political art which directs or regulates all others? A man has many different impulses, dispositions, qualities, aptitudes, advantages, possessions, &c., which we describe by saying that he is an artist, a general, a tradesman, clever, just, temperate, brave, strong, rich, powerful, &c. But in the course of life, each particular situation has its different exigencies, while the prospective future has its exigencies also. The whole man is one, with all these distinct and sometimes conflicting attributes: in following one impulse, he must resist others — in turning his aptitudes to one object, he must turn them away from others — he must, as Plato says, distinguish the right use of his force from the wrong, by virtue of knowledge, intelligence, reason. Such discriminating intelligence, which in this dialogue is called the Regal or political art, — what is the object of it? It is intelligence or knowledge, — But of what? Not certainly of the way how each particular act is to be performed — how each particular end is to be attained. Each of these separately is the object of some special knowledge. But the whole of a man’s life is passed in a series of such particular acts, each of which is the object of some special knowledge: what then remains as the object of Regal or political intelligence, upon which our happiness is said to depend?

The question here raised is present to Plato’s mind in other dialogues, and occurs under other words, as for example, What is good? Good is the object of the Regal or political intelligence; but what is Good? In the Republic he raises this question, but declines to answer it, confessing that he could not make it intelligible to his hearers:39 in the Gorgias, he takes pains to tell us what it is not: in the Philêbus, he does indeed tell us what it is, but in terms which need explanation quite as much as the term which they are brought to explain. There is only one dialogue in which the question is answered affirmatively, in clear and unmistakable language, and with considerable development — and that is, the Protagoras: where Sokrates asserts and proves at length, that Good is at the bottom identical with pleasure, and Evil with pain: that the measuring or calculating intelligence is the truly regal art of life, upon which the attainment of Good depends: and that the object of that intelligence — the items which we are to measure, calculate, and compare — is pleasures and pains, so as to secure to ourselves as much as possible of the former, and escape as much as possible of the latter.

In my remarks on the Protagoras, I shall state the view which I take of the doctrine laid down in that dialogue by Sokrates. Persons may think the answer insufficient: most of the Platonic critics declare it to be absolutely wrong. But at any rate it is the only distinct answer which Plato ever gives, to the question raised by Sokrates in the Euthydêmus and elsewhere.

From the abstract just given of the argument of Sokrates in the Euthydêmus, it will be seen to be serious and pertinent, though ending with a confession of failure. The observations placed in contrast with it and ascribed to the two Sophists, are distinguished by being neither serious nor pertinent; but parodies of debate for the most part, put together for the express purpose of appearing obviously silly to the reader. Plato keeps up the dramatic or ironical appearance, that they are admired and welcomed not only by the hearers, but even by Sokrates himself. Nevertheless, it is made clear at the end that all this is nothing but irony, and that the talk which Plato ascribes to Euthydêmus and Dionysodorus produced, according to his own showing, no sentiment of esteem for their abilities among the by-standers, but quite the reverse. Whether there were individual Sophists at Athens who talked in that style, we can neither affirm nor deny: but that there were an established class of persons who did so, and made both money and reputation by it, we can securely deny.

It is the more surprising that the Platonic commentators should desire us to regard Euthydêmus and Dionysodorus as representative samples of a special class named Sophists, since one of the most eminent of those commentators (Stallbaum),40 both admits that Sokrates himself was generally numbered in the class and called by the name and affirms also (incorrectly, in my opinion) that the interrogations of Sokrates, which in this dialogue stand contrasted with those of the two Sophists, do not enunciate the opinions either of Sokrates or of Plato himself, but the opinions of these very Sophists, which Plato adopts and utters for the occasion.41

The received supposition that there were at Athens a class of men called Sophists who made money and reputation by obvious fallacies employed to bring about contradictions in dialogue — appears to me to pervert the representations given of ancient philosophy. Aristotle defines a Sophist to be “one who seeks to make money by apparent wisdom which is not real wisdom“:— the Sophist (he says) is an Eristic who, besides money-making, seeks for nothing but victory in debate and humiliation of his opponent:— Distinguishing the Dialectician from the Sophist (he says), the Dialectician impugns or defends, by probable arguments, probable tenets — that is, tenets which are believed by a numerous public or by a few wise and eminent individuals:— while the Sophist deals with tenets which are probable only in appearance and not in reality — that is to say, tenets which almost every one by the slightest attention recognises as false.42 This definition is founded, partly on the personal character and purpose ascribed to the Sophist: partly upon the distinction between apparent and real wisdom, assumed to be known and permanent. Now such pseudo-wisdom was declared by Sokrates to be the natural state of all mankind, even the most eminent, which it was his mission to expose: moreover, the determination, what is to be comprised in this description, must depend upon the judges to whom it is submitted, since much of the works of Aristotle and Plato would come under the category, in the judgment of modern readers both vulgar and instructed.

But apart from this relative and variable character of the definition, when applied to philosophy generally — we may confidently assert, that there never was any real class of intellectual men, in a given time or place, to whom it could possibly apply. Of individuals, the varieties are innumerable: but no professional body of men ever acquired gain or celebrity by maintaining theses, and employing arguments, which every one could easily detect as false. Every man employs sophisms more or less; every man does so inadvertently, some do it by design also; moreover, almost every reasoner does it largely, in the estimation of his opponents. No distinct line can be drawn between the Sophist and the Dialectician: the definition given by Aristotle applies to an ideal in his own mind, but to no reality without: Protagoras and Prodikus no more correspond to it than Sokrates and Plato. Aristotle observes, with great truth, that all men are dialecticians and testers of reasoning, up to a certain point: he might have added that they are all Sophists also, up to a certain point.43 Moreover, when he attempts to found a scientific classification of intellectual processes upon a difference in the purposes of different practitioners — whether they employ the same process for money or display, or beneficence, or mental satisfaction to themselves — this is altogether unphilosophical. The medical art is the same, whether employed to advise gratis, or in exchange for a fee.44

Though I maintain that no class of professional Sophists (in the meaning given to that term by the Platonic critics after Plato and Aristotle) ever existed — and though the distinction between the paid and the gratuitous discourser is altogether unworthy to enter into the history of philosophy — yet I am not the less persuaded that the Platonic dialogue Euthydêmus, and the treatise of Aristotle De Sophisticis Elenchis, are very striking and useful compositions. This last-mentioned treatise was composed by Aristotle very much under the stimulus of the Platonic dialogue Euthydêmus, to which it refers several times — and for the purpose of distributing the variety of possible fallacies under a limited number of general heads, each described by its appropriate characteristic, and represented by its illustrative type. Such attempt at arrangement — one of the many valuable contributions of Aristotle to the theory of reasoning — is expressly claimed by him as his own. He takes a just pride in having been the first to introduce system where none had introduced it before.45 No such system was known to Plato, who (in the Euthydêmus) enumerates a string of fallacies one after another without any project of classifying them, and who presents them as it were in concrete, as applied by certain disputants in an imaginary dialogue. The purpose is, to make these fallacies appear conspicuously in their character of fallacies: a purpose which is assisted by presenting the propounders of them as ridiculous and contemptible.

The lively fancy of Plato attaches suitable accessories to Euthydêmus and Dionysodorus. They are old men, who have been all their lives engaged in teaching rhetoric and tactics, but have recently taken to dialectic, and acquired perfect mastery thereof without any trouble — who make extravagant promises — and who as talkers play into each other’s hands, making a shuttlecock of the respondent, a modest novice every way unsuitable for such treatment.

Thus different is the Platonic manner, from the Aristotelian manner, of exposing fallacies. But those exhibited in the former appear as members of one or more among the classes framed by the latter. The fallacies which we read in the Euthydêmus are chiefly verbal: but some are verbal, and something beyond.

Thus, for example, if we take the first sophism introduced by the two exhibitors, upon which they bring the youth Kleinias, by suitable questions, to declare successively both sides of the alternative — “Which of the two is it that learns, the wise or the ignorant?” — Sokrates himself elucidates it by pointing out that the terms used are equivocal:46 You might answer it by using the language ascribed to Dionysodorus in another part of this dialogue — “Neither and Both”.47 The like may be said about the fallacy in page 284 D — “Are there persons who speak of things as they are? Good men speak of things as they are: they speak of good men well, of bad men badly: therefore, of course, they speak of stout men stoutly, and of hot men hotly. Ay! rejoins the respondent Ktesippus, angrily — they speak of cold men coldly, and say that they talk coldly.”48 These are fallacies of double meaning of words — or double construction of phrases: as we read also in page 287 D, where the same Greek verb (νοεῖν) may be construed either to think or to mean: so that when Sokrates talks about what a predication means — the Sophists ask him — “Does anything think, except things having a soul? Did you ever know any predication that had a soul?”

Again, the two Sophists undertake to prove that Sokrates, as well as the youth Kleinias and indeed every one else, knows everything. “Can any existing thing be that which it is, and at the same time not be that which it is? — No. — You know some things? — Yes. — Then if you know, you are knowing? — Certainly. I am knowing of those particular things. — That makes no difference: if you are knowing, you necessarily know everything. — Oh! no: for there are many things which I do not know. — Then if there be anything which you do not know, you are not knowing? — Yes, doubtless — of that particular thing. — Still you are not knowing: and just now you said that you were knowing: and thus, at one and the same time, you are what you are, and you are not what you are.49

“But you also” (retorts Sokrates upon the couple), “do not you also know some things, not know others? — By no means. — What! do you know nothing? — Far from it. — Then you know all things? — Certainly we do, — and you too: if you know one thing, you know all things. — What! do you know the art of the carpenter, the currier, the cobbler — the number of stars in the heaven, and of grains of sand in the desert, &c.? — Yes: we know all these things.”

The two Sophists maintain their consistency by making reply in the affirmative to each of these successive questions: though Ktesippus pushes them hard by enquiries as to a string of mean and diverse specialties.50 This is one of the purposes of the dialogue: to represent the two Sophists as willing to answer any thing, however obviously wrong and false, for the purpose of avoiding defeat in the dispute — as using their best efforts to preserve themselves in the position of questioners, and to evade the position of respondents — and as exacting a categorical answer — Yes or No — to every question which they put without any qualifying words, and without any assurance that the meaning of the question was understood.51