The document details the emergence of the sophists in fifth century B.C. Greece, marking a shift in philosophical focus from cosmology to human society and individual perspectives. Unlike earlier philosophers who employed deductive reasoning, sophists used an inductive approach, emphasizing relativism and skepticism regarding objective truth and morality. Influential figures like Protagoras and Gorgias exemplified these ideas, promoting the concept that truth is determined by individual perspective and questioning the very existence of anything beyond personal experience.

1. Presocratic Philosophers Part 5
Summarized Notes

2. The Sophists
• With the arrival of the Sophists, there was a shift in
the main direction and focus of Western philosophy
• Before the sophists, philosophy was mainly concerned
with the physical world
• The philosophers before them focused their attention
on the cosmos, speculating on the underlying unity in
the midst of diversity
• The sophists, however, were not interested in such
cosmological speculations, their main interest was
man in the society

3. The Sophists Contd.
• The sophists differed from the earlier philosophers, not
only in the main object of interest but also in methods
• The earlier philosophers began with general principles
and tried to explain particular cases in terms of these
general principles, thus employing the deductive
method
• But the Sophists began with particular cases which they
had observed and drew general conclusions from them
• Their method was therefore inductive

4. The Sophists Contd.
• The Sophists were a group of teachers and philosophers in the
fifth century B.C.
• They were itinerant teachers who went from one city to
another teaching and instructing people, especially the youths
• They instructed the youths and all those who aspired to
participate in the democratic government of Athens
• They taught, not only philosophy, but also grammar and
rhetoric, and they charged money for their teaching
• It was not the practice among the Greeks for philosophers to
demand money for teaching philosophy, but the Sophists did
and it made them unpopular

5. The Sophists Contd.
• In general, the Sophists were very critical, they questioned
the foundations of traditional beliefs, traditional ways of
life, traditional institutions and customs
• They questioned the foundation of traditional religion and
morality, and cast doubts on the real existence of God
• For them, religion and morality were human inventions
• Nevertheless they did not encourage people to violate the
traditions and customary moral laws.
• On the contrary, they encouraged their observance for
prudent reasons

6. The Sophists Contd.
• The Sophists combined scepticism with their
criticism
• They doubted the possibility of knowing anything
with certainty
• Their scepticism can be seen as the outcome of
the cosmological speculation of the earlier
philosophers with their conflicting theories
• These led the Sophists to doubt the possibility of
knowing anything for certain

7. The Sophists Contd.
• Relativism is another characteristic feature of
the Sophists.
• They were relativists who denied the
existence of objective and universal truths.
• For them, truth is relative depending on the
point of view of the individual
• Whether anything can be said to be true or
false depends on the way you look at it.

8. The Sophists Contd.
• Everybody see things from his own point of view.
• What is true for you is true for you, and what is true for
me is true for me
• Things appear to different people in different ways, and
everybody can only say the way things appear to him
• Truth therefore depends on the way you look at it
• This relativism later earned the Sophists the severe
criticism of Socrates and Plato who believed in the
absolute universality and objectivity of truth, and the
possibility of man attaining it.

9. Protagoras
• Protagoras of Abdera was the most influential of the
Sophists
• He is particularly known for his saying that “man is the
measure of all things, of those that they are that they
are, of those that are not that they are not”
• This is a typical example of the relativism of the
Sophists.
• According to Protagoras it is man who decides for
himself what exists and what does not exist what is
true and what is not true

10. Protagoras Contd.
• What man thinks exist exists for him, and what he
thinks does not exist does not exist for him.
• What a man thinks is true is true for him
• It all depends on man, he is measure of all things
• The skepticism of the Sophists is also exemplified in
another statement of Protagoras concerning the
existence of the gods
• Protagoras distinguished between nature and custom
and held that moral rules and laws were based not on
nature but on custom or convention

11. Protagoras Contd.
• For every society had its own laws and moral
rules based on convention and not on nature
• He however encouraged the observance of
these laws and moral rules for reasons of
prudence

12. Gorgias
• Gorgias lived around 483-375 B.C. He was from Leontini
in Sicily but came to Athens in 427 B.C. as an
ambassador
• The skepticism of the Sophists can be seen in its
extreme form in the curious book of Gorgias, entitled
On Nature or the Non-existent
• In his book, Gorgias set out to prove three things: first,
that nothing exists; second, that even if anything were
to exist it would be impossible to know it; third, that
even if it could be known it could not be communicated

13. Gorgias Contd.
• His argument for maintaining that nothing
exists is that if anything were to exist it must
either eternal or it must be infinite
• But if it is infinite it could not exist anywhere,
for an infinite being could neither contain
itself nor could any place contain it.
• If no place could contain it then it would exist
nowhere and to exist nowhere is not to exist

14. Gorgias Contd.
• If on the other hand it is not eternal but came
into being, then it must either have come out of
being or out of nothing
• It could not have come out of being for that
would mean it was already being before it came
into being.
• It could not have come from nothing, for only
nothing can come from nothing.
• The conclusion is that nothing exists