II Being and Truth, Humanity and Reality

Abstract

In order to understand the meaning and scope of the challenge that the sophists present to us, we must clear the field of all ambiguities and prejudices. All too often the sophist is only taken into consideration as a polemical target, as a counterpart to the philosopher: whereas the philosopher argues in order to seek the truth, the sophist only tries to win an argument; and whereas the philosopher concerns himself with problems in all of their complexity, the sophist instrumentally focuses on fashionable topics that might interest his public of potential pupils (in other words, people willing to pay him). These contrasts are repeated not only in relation to the future, which is to say to Plato and Aristotle, but also, retrospectively, in relation to the so-called ‘Presocratic philosophers’. As a consequence, the sophists find themselves in a sort of no man's land, and their activities appear to mark a break in the history of philosophy, interrupting its toilsome and earnest progression from myth to reason.