Toward a Kinder View of Sophists

This week readings tend to cast sophists in a negative light; there is the exception of John Poulakos’ “Toward a Sophist Definition of Rhetoric.” He, along with others such as Isocrates tend to cast sophists in a general sense, when, as Edward Schiappa argues, should be studied individually because generalizations can be made. In a sense, everyone seems to be ganging up on the sophists and lumping them into one category. Is this view of sophists fair? By no means is it so, however, I believe it is a case we often see in democratic societies. An influential person, with the means persuade an entire group lobby against a specific smaller group through the use of generalizations that do not necessarily apply to each individual within said smaller group.

History has seen this play out many times, but I will pull from a more recent example to illustrate my point. During the various waves of feminism, feminists have been labeled as man haters, bra burners, and lesbians. They have portrayed as women who want to dominate men and essentially reverse roles (Gerd Brantenberg addresses this issue and how it wouldn’t promote inequality in the novel Egalia’s Daughters: A Satire of the Sexes).  Feminists view the world differently and they see the inequality that exists between gender. Their view didn’t just happen organically. It came by questioning the status quo and challenging the reason behind it. In a sense, I think they were doing rhetoric. In many cases, when a smaller group begins to question the dominate group or even suggests there is a different way or doing things, they are usually met with a backlash. Like the Sophists, feminists were lumped together and paired with negative ideas and images. However, you cannot lump all feminists together.

Feminism have different views on gender equality and how to arrive there. The various camps have, what some people believe, caused the division in feminism that makes it difficult for the third wave to come together as decisively as the first or second wave. The first and second dealt with concrete issues such as voting and equality in the work place while the third wave has to deal with what I consider to be the most difficult: cultural gender inequality. There is nothing tangible to fight and its much harder to change someone’s way of thinking. Feminism today includes everything from Ms.Magazine to the infamous Pussyriot in Russian.

We cannot necessarily claim that all feminism is the same, however, we might perhaps come to the conclusion that modern feminists wants gender equality. First wave feminists (also associated with the suffrage movement) were interested in getting the right to vote. This didn’t always apply to all women, many of them thought this included only white women. Nevertheless, these women form the basis for early feminist ideals. Schiappa makes a similar argument in his article, “Neo-Sophistic Rhetorical Criticism.” He writes, “Aside form absent evidence and explanation to connect the Older Sophists’ fragments and texts to rhetorike, there are prima facie grounds for considering suspect any claims about sophistic theorizing about rhetoric.” While Schiappa recognizes that term rhetoric doesn’t appear in Sophist texts, that doesn’t mean they weren’t practicing it. Similarly, first wave feminists weren’t necessarily using the term or defining their movement in such a way. The idea of first wave was a term coined much later in the 20^th century, after the first wave took place. Later on Schiappa writes, “Even without the signifier (rhetorike), the signified (practice of rhetoric) existed and can be meaningfully discussed today.”

So, to address my central concern:  Is the view of sophists perpetrated throughout history fair? Inherently it is not. When any group is not in control of writing for themselves, then naturally, assumptions will be made. And when those assumptions are done by an outsider, they are in control of how the earlier group is viewed, not by the group members themselves. 


--Kiera P.