sophists

sophists

• made money by teaching others and charging them tuition

• argued persuasively - logos - rhetoric

• “make the weaker arguments the strong”

  • twist words around to make people agree with you

  • when persuasion is the highest value you get bullshit.

rhetoric

• relativism

  • the idea that truth is relative

  • protagoras, famous sophist - said man is the measure of all things.

  • what’s true for someone is true for them. he says this is all things.

  • there would be no difference between right and wrong

    • this is individual relativism

• skepticism

  • there might not be any truth at all

all that we know about the sophists is from those who did not like them