Brad, Nicely turned. However, you might have including a bit about the "good life.
I doubt that credence can be attached to philosophic criticism of the sophists, for they were a pain in the what-not to other philosophers, a situation unlikely to make them welcome at the philosophers' ball. I would argue that not too much can be gained from the rarified stuff that nowadays passes for philosophy. It seems to provide little more than a chance to marvel at the complexities of the human mind. "You know no more today than you did yesterday, so why are you still discussing it?" Their is a bit of sophistry for you. I wonder the origin of the word? Harry _____________________________________________ Brad wrote: >Harry Pollard wrote: > > > > Keith, > > > > In my lighter moments I regard myself as a kind of neo-sophist. The > > sophists were likely to say to their earnest contemporaries - 'You know no > > more today than you did yesterday, so why are you still discussing it?' So, > > in that spirit, I would say that we know perhaps all we will ever know > > about a the possibility of a Supreme Being. > > > > So, all right already! >[snip] > >After Plato, we know not too much about the Sophists. > >It looks like some were con-artists teaching con-artistry, >and some (like Protagoras?) were more like American Pragmatists, >teaching how to lead a good life in society. > >One thing they probably would all have agreed on would be >that individual human beings have to choose how they will >live and that there is no G-d or Eternal Forms to tell >each of us how to live. So maybe they were all >proto-"existentialists". > >Calling oneself a "neo-sophist", I think, could mean one is >a con-artist [e.g., a neo-liberal economist...], or that one >is a democratic socialist [e.g., a John Dewey...], >or probably a number of other >things. > > Man is the measurer of all things. > (--Protagoras, with a slight emendation > to make sense of Plato's quots of him) > >"Yours in discourse...." (which was probably a more serious >human praxis for Protagoras than for Plato, since Plato >already knew all the answers, and Socrates may have been >Jacques Derrida in a "time warp") > >\brad mccormick ****************************** Harry Pollard Henry George School of LA Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 Tel: (818) 352-4141 Fax: (818) 353-2242 *******************************
