Although the political thought of ancient Greece reached the pinnacles of its glory in the third and fourth centuries B.C., it had made some development before that period as well. The aftermath of the Peloponnese War was really brilliant in the sense that, as Sabine says, the great age of political philosophy “came only after the downfall of Athens in her struggle with Sparta.” However, a study of the pre-platonic political thought is a study of those predecessors of Plato who had rather mature political ideas. They are the Sophists, Socrates, the Cynics and the Cyrenaics.
The Sophists:
The school of the Sophists was the outcome of those disturbing elements that deeply affected the political and economic life of ancient Greece. The cycles of active and violent clashes caused by the Persian war, on the one hand, and the great Peloponnesian war, on the other, a sharp rivalry going on between Persian absolutism on relatively on side and clamor for Greek autonomy on the other, and, finally, the disastrous tug-of-war between the oligarchical element of Spartan militia on the one extreme and Athenian democracy on the other, were the most notable factors that supplied food for the thought of the Sophists. These events gave birth to the need for making an inquiry into the deficiencies of the existing political institutions and thereby setting aside the hitherto dominant study of nature.
The Sophists (like Gorgias, Lycophron, Hippias, Protagorus and Prodieus) represented a period of transition in the growth of Greek political philosophy rather than any particular system of thought. They presented a dish of different materials and their speculations touched not only politics but other subjects as well like logic, rhetoric, philosophy and ethics.
They believed that ‘man is the measure of all things’. They also emphasized the selfish nature of man and thereby justified the principle of ‘might is right’. The Sophistic tradition further signified that on account of man’s being unequal is strength by nature and justice being the interest of the stronger, the political authority was justified in being selfish even tyrannical. Might was the basis of the state. Obviously, to the Sophists, the state was an institution either formed by the strong to oppress the weak, or by the weak to defend themselves against the oppressions of the strong. The Sophists regarded the state as an artificial creation built upon man’s self-interest. They taught that the state was simply a means to an end, and that end was the self- indulgence of its rulers.
Skepticism was the keynote of the philosophy of the Sophists. Their conceptions meant ‘nothingness in the existence of everything.’ The law was a matter of conventional necessity. There was nothing like natural law. They also held that by nature man was free and there could be nothing like rationality of nature. They studied the case of man with a view to enable him to lead the practical life of a citizen. Moreover, the Sophists wholly rejected the ideas of universal truth and abstract principles of justice. Taking man as the center of their study, the Sophists explored the real significance of man in the world of law, government and social institutions. In fine, the Sophists were those earliest Greek teachers who taught something about politics along with several other subjects.
Although the Sophists “had no common creed, they all reflected the cynical realism of the day”. They marked the diversity in Greek intellectual life of that time and “offered themselves as teachers of an assortment of what we would today call liberal arts courses. They taught truth not for its own sake, but as a means to an end. Indeed, they pretty nearly taught that there was nothing absolutely and universally true, that there were no principles abstractly valid, no canons of conduct everywhere and under all circumstances binding. They recognized no distinction between the idea of right and the formal laws in which it might find itself embodied. Because they saw these forms differing at different times and among different peoples they rejected the idea that there were abstract principles of justice which were everywhere valid. “Man, they said, is the measure of all things… By man they meant mankind as distributively viewed, not as universally conceived.”
Although the Sophists “had no common creed, they all reflected the cynical realism of the day”. They marked the diversity in Greek intellectual life of that time and “offered themselves as teachers of an assortment of what we would today call liberal arts courses. They taught truth not for its own sake, but as a means to an end. Indeed, they pretty nearly taught that there was nothing absolutely and universally true, that there were no principles abstractly valid, no canons of conduct everywhere and under all circumstances binding. They recognized no distinction between the idea of right and the formal laws in which it might find itself embodied. Because they saw these forms differing at different times and among different peoples they rejected the idea that there were abstract principles of justice which were everywhere valid. “Man, they said, is the measure of all things… By man they meant mankind as distributively viewed, not as universally conceived.”
Carrying his interpretation further, Willoughby adds “That is according to the Sophists, each individual, with all his accidental and peculiar desires and characteristics, to pass judgment upon what was right and wrong for him to do…Instead of being instructed to see principles on natural or universal right embodied in the civil laws and customary morality of his country, the citizen was taught to discover only particular decrees which were in the main product of the selfish desires of those who had originally issued or sanctioned them… holding such a position as this was the sole basis for a legitimate exercise of power. For if there were no universal principles of justice to be enforced, and it self-interest were the sole actuating motives in human conduct, political right necessarily rested upon a simple basis of might.
Will Durant thus admires them: “Though they did not form any community of thought, nor they began their study with an uncommon approach or radical angle of vision, yet the most characteristic and fertile developments of Greek philosophy took form with the Sophists, traveling teachers of wisdom, who looked within upon their own thought and nature rather upon the world of things… there is hardly a problem or a solution in our current philosophy of mind and conduct which they did not realize and discuss. They asked questions about anything, they stood unafraid in the presence of religious or political taboos and boldly subpoenaed every creed and in station to appear before the judgment-seat of reason.” Likewise, Barker says: “The Sophists have been called half-professors, half-journalists; they were half-teachers and thinkers, half-dissemination of things new and strange, paradoxical and astonishing, which would catch the ear. With something of a charlatan they also combined something of the philosopher. In any case it was much for the future history of Greek taught that they should have systematized like ‘rhetoric’ or politics into a method or course of instruction. Such systematization did two things. It helped the differentiation of subject from subject, and the division of labor in the field of knowledge. It gave the idea of a systematized their courses repaired the way for Aristotle.”
Sources: W.W.Willoughby: The political theories of the Ancient World.
Will Durant: The story of philosophy
Will Durant: The story of philosophy