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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 July 2020
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.
1 Other testimonies about Prodicus’ naturalistic interests – in particular, that of Galen – have been collected by Mayhew 2011: T 61–9 (see also Mayhew 2011: 171–5, on Aristotle's testimony as a source for reconstructing Prodicus’ cosmology).
2 Hourcade 2001. Within the same context, we may also mention those testimonies apparently concerning a ‘sophistic theory of perception’ (Ioli 2010: 56–9, following in the footsteps of Monique Dixsaut). Indeed, Platonic passages such as Theaetetus, 153e–154a, and Meno, 76d, may be taken to suggest that Protagoras and Gorgias had somehow adopted the Presocratic theories envisaging sense-perception in terms of the flow of particles.
3 Detienne 2006.
4 The sceptic Sextus Empiricus, one of our most important sources, attributes this sentence to a work entitled Kataballontes logoi (The Overthrower Arguments or, better, The Knockdown Arguments; on this translation, see Appendix 2): one possible solution may be that Truth was one of the discourses in the Antilogies, which were also known with the (sub)title of Kataballontes logoi: see Decleva Caizzi 1999: 317. Among the most important studies, see Vlastos 1956; Decleva Caizzi 1978; Barnes 1979: ii.541–53; Mansfeld 1981; Farrar 1988.
5 The sentence introducing the treatise on the gods was just as provocative: see Chapter 6, p. 112.
6 To be more precise, it must be noted that Protagoras, like many thinkers of his day, does not distinguish between the mind and sense-perceptions as though they concerned two completely different domains (i.e. the intelligible world and the sensible one): cf. 80A1 D.-K = 31R13 L.-M. on the soul.
7 Mansfeld 1981: 44–6.
8 Farrar 1988: 48–50.
9 See 29A29 D.-K. = Zen. D12b L.-M.: ‘For he [Zeno] said: “Tell me, Protagoras, does one grain of millet make a sound when it falls or does the thousandth part of the grain of millet?” When the other answered that it did not, he said, “Does a medimnus of grains of millet make a sound or not when it falls?” When the other answered that it did make a noise, Zeno said, “Well then, is there not a proportion between a medimnus of grains of millet and a single grain and the thousandth part of that one grain?” And when the other answered that there was one, Zeno said, “Well then, will there not be the same proportions between the sounds with regard to one another? For just as the things are that make a sound, so too are their sounds; and since that is so, if a medimnus of millet makes a sound, a single grain of millet will make a sound too, and so too the thousandth part of that grain”’. While not impossible in chronological terms, it seems unlikely that the meeting between the two thinkers really occurred. However, this passage may still be seen to provide further evidence of the polemical exchanges that the sophist entertained with the Eleatic school. The text in question has sometimes been interpreted as proof of the fact that Protagoras denied infinite divisibility; but this seems like an incorrect conclusion, since Protagoras – at least in theory – does not deny the possibility of a division into increasingly small parts. What he denies is rather that the sound produced by these portions of millet is audible. Once again, we may note that the sophist examined things from the point of view of sensible experience, against the abstractions of the natural philosophers: just as sight does not perceive the touching of a sphere and a tangent at a given point (see 80B7 D.-K. =31D33 L.-M.), so hearing can only perceive sounds up to a certain point. Even from this perspective, man is the measure of all things.
10 On this passage, see Zilioli 2013: 239–43, arguing that Plato's text attributes to Protagoras not so much a radical version of a Heraclitean theory of flux as a theory of ontological indeterminacy; and Corradi 2012: 79–89.
11 This does not rule out the possibility that Protagoras’ conception of material reality may have been similar to that of other Presocratics, but it is important to stress once again that this was not the sophist's chief interest. In brief, and without delving into the details, it cannot be ruled out that Protagoras viewed physical reality as something that contains all opposites. If this is the case, the sophist was only taking up a thesis that was common among natural philosophers and typical of the polarizing thought of the Presocratics, who were used to envisaging nature in terms of contrasting or harmonizing opposites (let us think here of the Pythagoreans or of Heraclitus). This is Sextus Empiricus’ interpretation (Outlines of Pyrrhonism, 1.216–19 = 80A14 D.-K. = 31R21 L.-M.), cf. Woodruff 1999: 303–4.
12 Versenyi 1962: 181.
13 More recently, see also the ‘pluralist’ reading developed by Apfel 2011: 45–78.
14 See Woodruff 1999: 300–4; Lee 2005: 30–45; Zilioli 2013. On the adoption of this category with reference to Protagoras and the sophists, consider the cautious note sounded by Bett 1989.
15 Barnes 1979: ii.548.
16 Burnyeat 1976; Lee 2005: 46–76; and especially Castagnoli 2010.
17 Woodruff 1999: 303.
18 Very interesting considerations regarding the problem of what is useful and its relativity may be found in Guthrie 1971: 164–75. De facto, the relativity of what is useful may be understood both in an objective sense (the usefulness of a thing varies depending on the people or circumstances) and in a subjective sense (nothing is good or bad in itself: it is we who establish this). The first sense best expresses Protagoras’ position.
19 Woodruff 1999: 309; Woodruff 2013.
20 ‘The object of my instruction is good deliberation about household matters, to know how to manage one's own household in the best way possible, and about those of the city, so as to be most capable of acting and speaking in the city's interests’ (Protagoras, 318e–319a). Reference to the political craft is made immediately afterwards, at 319a (both passages are included in the Diels-Kranz edition as testimony 80A5 = 31D37 L.-M.).
21 Guthrie 1971: 174–5.
22 The question of titles is always a thorny one for archaic and classical authors. However, as rightly noted by Palmer 2009: 205 n. 25, the peculiarity of Melissus’ and Gorgias’ titles would seem to suggest that they are authentic and that the latter was probably drawing upon the former. On the possible dating of the text to the mid-fifth century bc (or, more precisely, to the years 444–441 bc, the date of the eighty-fourth Olympic Games: 82B2 D.-K. = 32P4 L.-M.), see the cautious remarks by Mansfeld 1985: 247 and Ioli 2010: 15–18.
23 Wardy 1996: 15.
24 Cassin 1995: 27.
25 We have two main sources: an anonymous treatise devoted to a critical discussion of the thought of Melissus, Xenophanes, and Gorgias (On Melissus, Xenophanes, and Gorgias, usually abbreviated to M.X.G.; on the identity of this author, see Ioli 2010: 23–8); and Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians, 7.65–87. Despite the evident similarities, these two texts arrange Gorgias’ writing in different ways: the more reliable source is probably M.X.G. (which I will be following); Sextus’ discussion (the only one published in the Diels-Kranz edition) appears instead to reflect a desire to reshape Gorgias’ arguments by lending them a sceptical twist. Particularly crucial are the analyses provided by Calogero 1932; Newiger 1973; and Mansfeld 1985. Among other modern editions, I shall refer to Cassin 1980; Buchheim 1989; and Ioli 2010 and 2013.
26 The most convincing analyses are found in Calogero 1932: 189–268; Mansfeld 1985; Striker 1996: 11–14; Palmer 1999: 66–74; Curd 2006; and Ioli 2010: 28–40.
27 The text of the anonymous M.X.G. literally states: ‘so that things (pragmata) are not more (ouden mallon) than they are not’. However, we should not rule out the possibility that the choice of the expression ouden mallon and the use of pragma may depend on the vocabulary (and Pyrrhonian inclinations) of the source rather than on Gorgias himself: see Mansfeld 1988: 258, followed by Curd 2006: 187 n. 8; contra, see Ioli 2010: 34–36.
28 Curd 2006: 186.
29 Palmer 1999: 72.
30 See Striker 1996: 12. This reasoning is also referred to by Plato in the Parmenides (162a–b: see Mansfeld 1985: 258–62; Palmer 1999: 109–17) and Aristotle in the Metaphysics (see 1003b10: ‘It is for this reason that we say even of non-being that it is non-being’).
31 Calogero 1932: 197.
32 Ioli 2010: 31; cf. 28B6, 8–9 D.-K. = Parm. D8, 8–9 L.-M. Another objection to Gorgias’ reasoning is put forth by the anonymous author of M.X.G., who observes that Gorgias’ thesis also implies the opposite conclusion: given that being and not-being coincide, one might conclude not that nothing is, but that everything is. Yet, once again, the anti-Parmenidean polemical backdrop is enough to show that this is not a real objection at all for Gorgias, given that his primary aim is to conflate being and not-being: for Parmenides, claiming that everything is – both what is and what is not – is no more acceptable than the thesis that nothing is.
33 On Gorgias’ argumentative strategy, which often arranges his opponents’ theses into contrasting pairs or multiple sets of arguments (e.g. Encomium of Helen, 13), see Mansfeld 1985 and 1986 and the observations made in Chapter 3, pp. 57–62.
34 Briefly put, Gorgias’ argument would run as follows: if P, then X or Y; but neither X nor Y; hence, not P either. A similar argumentative structure also underpins the second discussion, focusing on the issue of whether being is one or many: if being were one, it would be bodiless; but what is bodiless has no magnitude, and with no magnitude it would be nothing, as Zeno observed. On the other hand, if there is no unity, there cannot be any multiplicity either, since this depends on unity. Therefore, if being is neither one nor many, it is not: nothing is. In M.X.G. we then find a discussion on movement, but the fragmentary state of the text does not allow us to determine whether it constituted a further development of the reflection on unity/multiplicity or whether it instead marked the beginning of the discussion on the motion/rest pair. In support of the first (and more reasonable) hypothesis, see Ioli 2010: 46–8.
35 Caston 2002.
36 This point might also be raised against Protagoras, who had upheld a sort of infallibilism by denying the possibility of error: see Di Benedetto 1955 (according to whom Protagoras is actually the chief polemical target of the whole treatise); Mansfeld 1985: 249–58; Caston 2002: 217–18; Ioli 2010: 50–60.
37 An alternative reconstruction that is worth mentioning is the one suggested by Wardy 1996: 14–21, who justifies the impossibility of transmitting logos on the basis of a physicalist interpretation of it: logoi are not symbols but physical objects; as such, they can only occur in one place at any one moment; clearly, this makes the transmission of the same logos impossible.
38 Kerferd 1984: 218–21; Palmer 2009: 87–8.
39 See Gomperz 1912: 28.
40 One notable example of this interpretation is furnished by Diels 1884, which reconstructs Gorgias’ spiritual history in three stages: after initially subscribing to Empedocles’ theses, Gorgias discovered Eleatic dialectic, which marked the beginning of a ‘period of doubt, or rather of despair’, culminating with the nihilism of the treatise on not-being; Gorgias then emerged from this nihilism through a new interest in rhetoric. The nihilistic interpretation crops up again and again in the literature (see the list in Caston 2002: 205 n. 1) and has recently been taken up again by Hourcade 2006.
41 Consider too fragment 82B12 D.-K. = 32D18 L.-M.: ‘Gorgias said that we should destroy our opponents’ seriousness by laughter, and their laughter by seriousness.’
42 See J. Robinson 1973.
43 Besides, as rightly noted by Kerferd 1955–6: 3, Gorgias’ treatise is just as playful as Plato's Parmenides (see Parm. 137b).
44 This is suggested, e.g., by Striker 1996: 11–14; Woodruff 1999: 305–6; Caston 2002: 207–8. See also Wardy 1996: 9–24.
45 Caston 2002: 208.
46 The main champions of this thesis are Mourelatos 1985, Wardy 1996, and Consigny 2001: 60–73 et passim. Cassin 1995 adopts a similar position, with a markedly idiosyncratic reading.
47 Segal 1962: 110.
48 Brunschwig 2002.
49 Pradeau 2009b: 327.
50 See Themistius, Paraphrase of Metaphysics, 6.25–7.2; Philoponus, Commentary on Physics, 43.9–13; Simplicius, Commentary on Physics, 93.29–30 (these passages are not included in the D.-K. edition). It seems that a passage from Plato's Sophist (251b) can also be traced back to discussions of this kind, albeit not necessarily to Lycophron.
51 Bonazzi and Pradeau 2009: 335.
52 See Diogenes Laertius, 6.1; Guthrie 1971: 216–18.
53 See Romeyer-Dherbey 1985: 96–103.
54 See Gagarin 2002: 69–71.
55 Untersteiner 1949–62: iv.178–95; Decleva Caizzi 1986a; Neschke Hentske 1995: 140–9; Bonazzi 2012. See also Sedley 2013.
56 Woodruff 1999: 309.
57 Paci 1957: 126.