MA

Socrates, Sophists, Oracle of Delphi - Key Terms

Overview: Socrates, the Sophists, and the Oracle

This lecture frames a pivotal moment in ancient Greek thought: the emergence of the sophists as a professional teaching class in rhetoric and public speaking, the charge that Socrates faces in relation to them, and the larger political and intellectual context of Athens at the turn of the fifth century BCE. The speaker begins by describing Socrates as unique and disheveled, suggesting that his mission from a divine oracle drives his life more than appearances, jobs, or social status. Socrates interprets the oracle’s claim that no one is wiser than he as a challenge to pursue a deeper understanding of what “wisdom” truly is, a pursuit that guides his questioning method rather than dogmatic teaching. The narrative then shifts to the rise of the sophists, who popularize a new form of education focused on persuasive speaking and rhetoric that can win public arguments, influence legislation, and help individuals advance socially and financially. This development raises questions about the value and integrity of education, much as contemporary debates around college and indoctrination do in the modern world. The lecturer notes Aristophanes’ satirical portrayal of the sophists and the imagined “thinkery,” a fictional school where such instruction is pursued, hinting at ongoing skepticism about what is taught and to whom it is taught.

The Sophists: Who They Were and What They Did

Socrates’ contemporary rivals, the sophists, are characterized here by three key traits. First, they are professional teachers who are paid for their instruction. Second, they travel from place to place with pupils, often attracting wealthy sponsors and followers who seek their knowledge and methods. Third, they accumulate wealth and public influence by teaching skills of rhetoric that can sway courts, assemblies, and public opinion. The most famous example is Protagoras of Abdera, whose prominence is underscored by Platonic dialogues bearing his name, such as the Protagoras. The sophists are linked to the broader category of sophistry, a term that historically carries both admiration and suspicion. Philosophically, the sophists claim access to special wisdom and offer education akin to an early form of higher learning that promises practical benefits: wealth, status, and power for those who master their techniques.

At the same time, the speaker highlights why the sophists are controversial. They are seen as promoting skepticism about knowledge and moral relativism, suggesting that moral judgments are not objectively true but contingent on convention. In their telling, virtue becomes a means to social and economic advantage rather than a pursuit of truth or the goods of the soul. The word virtue, in Greek, denotes excellence—doing one’s function well. Yet for the sophists, the function might be interpreted as achieving wealth, influence, and social standing. The contrast with philosophy—where love of wisdom (philosophy) indicates a quest for truth rather than power—becomes central to the tension between Socrates and the sophists.

The lecturer emphasizes the connection between sophistry and public perception of education. Some view sophists with suspicion for offering a marketable, perhaps morally flexible education; others see value in having access to rhetorical skills that enable one to navigate public life successfully. The parallel to modern debates about higher education is drawn to illustrate the perennial question: what is taught in schools, who benefits, and what counts as genuine knowledge? Aristophanes’ satire of the thinkery—the imagined sophist school—serves as a cultural mirror showing that the concerns about indoctrination, authority, and the purpose of education are not new but have deep historical roots.

The Oracle, Socrates, and the Mission to Seek Wisdom

A central thread is the Delphic Oracle’s pronouncement that no one is wiser than Socrates. This statement is cryptic, and the society faces it as a riddle to be interpreted. Socrates interprets this not as a boast about his own knowledge but as a call to examine what it means to be wise. He concludes that his wisdom lies in recognizing his own ignorance, a self-awareness that sets him apart from those who claim to possess knowledge. This paradox—that the wisest person may be someone who does not claim certainty—frames Socrates’ approach to inquiry: a lifelong pursuit of understanding through questioning rather than proclamation of truth.

The speaker situates the oracle’s message in a broader cultural milieu. The same oracle is invoked during the Persian Wars, when the Athenians consult it for strategic guidance. The famous interpretation—that the “wooden walls” referred to ships rather than fortifications—led Athenians to build up their navy, a decision that had strategic consequences in the war at sea. While the historical details of the naval battles are mentioned—such as the eventual defeat of the Persians and the famous stand of the 300 Spartans—the focus is on how deeply the oracle was trusted as a source of wisdom and guidance. Herodotus is noted as a primary source who travels widely to report on different oracles and their comparative accuracy, illustrating how the ancient world treated divine guidance as a central, influential source of political decision-making.

The lesson for our material is not the accuracy of any specific prophecy but the weight given to oracles as authoritative knowledge. The oracle’s pronouncement about Socrates becomes a catalyst for his lifelong mission: to investigate what true wisdom is by interrogating those who claim to know important things about life, ethics, and politics. In the dialogue tradition that follows, Socrates will pursue questions about justice, virtue, and truth, often by exposing the limits of those who claim to know more than they actually do.

Democracy, Persian Wars, and Athens’ Rise to Preeminence

Two historical developments, highlighted as turning points for Athens, help explain the city’s preeminence among Greek city-states in the early fifth century BCE: the rise of democracy and the Persian Wars. Democracy, in the sense of a more participatory political system, expands political life and creates a marketplace for debate, persuasion, and public decision-making. This climate thrives on rhetoric and persuasive skills, which in turn elevates the status of those who can articulate arguments effectively—precisely the domain of the sophists. The Persian Wars, including the famous naval conflict where the Athenians interpret the Delphic oracle to strengthen their fleet, demonstrate Athens’ military and strategic reach and consolidate its leadership among the Greek states.

The lecture then returns to the oracle’s broader cultural impact. The same Delphic authority that advised the Athenians in wartime also provided philosophical fodder for the citizens’ discussions about wisdom and governance. Herodotus’s travel narratives show how different cultures interacted with their own oracles, and how those oracles were believed to reflect divine or cosmic order. The underlying message is that in this period, religious and philosophical authority overlapped with political life, shaping decisions both in war and in the classroom.

The Thinkery and Public Perception of Education

Aristophanes’ satire of the sophists—through his portrayal of a thinkery—reflects broader concerns about the nature and purpose of education. The thinkery suggests a setting in which instruction is designed to produce effective rhetoric and social leverage rather than genuine understanding. The public’s ambivalence toward this form of education is evident: some see it as a practical path to success, while others view it as a potentially dangerous breeding ground for manipulation and moral relativism. The drama highlights a crucial tension between knowledge pursued for its own sake and instruction pursued for worldly gain.

The course logistics around this point—discussion of homework and grading—serves to ground the philosophical content in the teaching context. The instructor notes that some chapter numbers or behavioral descriptions might be off in the text, and explains how homework checks (red check marks) indicate credit, with the practical workflow of returning graded work. While these notes are incidental to the philosophical material, they illustrate the everyday realities of how students engage with the study of philosophy: through dialogue, assessment, and revision as they move toward exams.

Ethics, Norms, and the Philosophical Divide: Nomos vs Physis

A central philosophical debate in this material concerns the status of ethics and morality. The sophists are presented as relativists about morality, arguing that moral rules are nomos—human inventions or conventions—rather than expressions of a fixed natural order (physis). This yields a significant claim: moral judgments depend on human decisions and cultural contexts, not on universal truths discoverable in nature. By contrast, physics or physis refers to natural law that would hold regardless of human beliefs or choices, such as gravity or other laws of nature. The distinction is captured in the contrast between nomos (human-made norms) and physis (natural order). The Greek terms for “norms” and “laws” reflect this division: nomos denotes conventional rules created by communities, while physis denotes what would be true independently of human arrangements.

The implications are profound. If ethics are simply nomos, then moral right and wrong are contingent and could differ across cultures or historical periods. This raises practical questions about conscience, guilt, and moral obligation: why should I feel guilty if morality is merely a matter of convention? The Sophists’ view challenges the assumption of objective moral truth, pushing debates toward questions about the sources of moral authority: gods, human agreement, or rational deliberation. The lecturer notes that traditional Greek citizens, who viewed morality as grounded in the gods and in inherited myths, would find the Sophists’ stance destabilizing. The debate then extends to a larger question about whether ethics belongs to the realm of nature (a universal standard) or to human invention (convention).

Socrates versus the Sophists: Method, Knowledge, and Rhetoric

Socrates is portrayed as the archetype of the philosopher who relentlessly questions rather than asserts. He is depicted as someone who seeks genuine knowledge and refuses to claim certainty about important matters. This stance sets him apart from the sophists, who claim to possess or teach special wisdom and to provide tools to persuade others, sometimes irrespective of the truth of the proposition. A central distinction is that sophists pride themselves on rhetoric—the art of persuading—where the outcome (winning the argument) can matter more than whether the argument is true. In contrast, Socrates proclaims that he cares about truth and the best understanding of justice, not merely about winning debates.

Socrates’ method, often described as the elenchus or cross-examination, involves asking probing questions to expose inconsistencies in others’ claims. When Socrates subjects a sophist like Protagoras to questioning, the sophist’s account often fails to stand up to scrutiny. This dynamic—questioning claimed knowledge—produces the sense that Socrates exposes pretenders who claim to know more than they actually do. The paradoxical nature of Socrates’ wisdom is that he is the wisest precisely because he claims to know nothing, thereby maintaining intellectual humility and an ongoing commitment to inquiry. This posture is contrasted with Plato’s later portrayal of Socrates in the Republic, where the question of the most just political arrangement is addressed through more definitive philosophical claims, in contrast to Socrates’ earlier, more dialectical style.

The dialogue between Socratic method and sophistic rhetoric also frames the charge of corrupting the youth: Socrates questions conventional wisdom and parries the claim to authority, while the sophists offer a path to influence through persuasive speaking. Socrates’ own claim—that he is not a teacher who claims to impart knowledge, but a pursuer of truth—highlights his fundamental difference from the sophists, who claim the ability to teach others how to wield argument effectively, sometimes without a commitment to truth.

Virtue, the Good Life, and the Philosophical Stakes

The discussion of virtue centers on two different visions of what counts as the good life. For the sophists, virtue often translates into excellence in achieving one’s aims, which can be understood as wealth, power, influence, and social success. In this view, virtue is instrumental: it is about performing well within the given social system, and excellence is measured by outcomes in the public sphere. By contrast, the philosophical tradition that Socrates represents emphasizes goods of the soul and moral integrity as primary. The good life is not simply the accumulation of wealth or status but the cultivation of virtue in a way that aligns with a rational and shared conception of truth and justice.

This tension is further complicated by the religious and mythic framework of the culture. Religion provides a set of universal goods and the expectation that morality comes from divine authority. The Sophists’ relativistic stance challenges this by claiming that moral norms are conventional and human-made, while Socrates' approach seeks objective or at least rationally defensible standards through critical questioning. The philosophical stakes, therefore, involve not only theoretical disputes about the nature of ethics but also practical questions about what kind of education, governance, and life lead to genuine human flourishing.

The Paradox of Wisdom and the Socratic Method in Practice

A recurring motif is the paradox that Socrates embodies: he is the wisest precisely because he admits ignorance, whereas others who claim wisdom may not truly know what they claim to know. This paradox underpins his approach to philosophy as a disciplined inquiry rather than a proclamation of certainty. Socrates is described as a ‘pure’ philosopher in that he seldom asserts a positive truth about the good life or the nature of justice; instead, he models a method of continual questioning that erodes false certainties and reveals the limits of other authorities, including the sophists. The result is a distinctive view of philosophy as a practice of critical examination that seeks to refine understanding rather than to secure prestige or material rewards.

The discussion also connects to Plato’s later philosophical program. While Socrates is the paradigm of perpetual inquiry and ethical examination, Plato, in his Republic, develops a more constructive, systematic account of political philosophy and the nature of justice. The tension between Socratic method and Platonic system highlights a transition within the Western philosophical tradition from question-based inquiry to more comprehensive systems of thought. The lecture closes by noting that the seminar would resume after a brief pause, with a reminder that the course will continue to build on these foundational distinctions between knowledge, truth, and the role of education in shaping human life.

Key Terms and Concepts to Remember

  • Sophists: traveling professional teachers who charged fees, gathered students, and taught rhetoric for public success. ext{Sophists}
    ightarrow ext{rhetoric, wealth, public influence}
  • Protagoras: the most famous sophist, central to dialogues named after him (e.g., Protagoras).
  • Thinkery: a satirical term for the sophist school depicted by Aristophanes.
  • Oracle of Delphi: a divine pronouncement about Socrates, interpreted as a call to seek wisdom.
  • Nomos vs Physis: nomos = human convention or law; physis = natural law; a central ethical distinction between conventional morality and natural or objective principles. ext{Nomos}= ext{human convention}, ext{ Physis}= ext{natural law}
  • Virtue: typically translated as excellence; for sophists, virtue is often tied to social success; for philosophers, virtue is tied to genuine goods of the soul. ext{Virtue}= ext{excellence}
  • Elenchus: Socratic method of cross-examination and questioning to expose inconsistencies.
  • Rhetoric vs Truth: Sophists emphasize persuasive technique; Socrates emphasizes truth-seeking and epistemic humility.
  • The Paradox of Wisdom: the idea that true wisdom lies in recognizing one’s own ignorance.

Practical Takeaways for Study

  • Understand the historical context of Athens’ democracy and the Persian Wars as the backdrop for the rise of rhetoric and public debate.
  • Distinguish between the two major intellectual currents: sophistry (rhetoric for worldly gain and relativistic ethics) and Socratic philosophy (the pursuit of truth through questioning).
  • Be able to explain why Socrates is described as the paradigm philosopher: constant questioning, avoidance of positive assertions, and an emphasis on knowledge rather than winning arguments.
  • Be able to articulate the nomos vs physis distinction and its ethical implications, including how relativism challenges traditional religiously grounded ethics.
  • Recall Aristophanes’ critique of the sophists and the idea of the thinkery as a cultural touchstone for debates about education and legitimacy.
  • Remember the practical course details mentioned (homework checks, the idea of rapid feedback, and the broader aim of aligning study with upcoming exams).