A History of Greek Philosophy, Volume 3: The Fifth Century Enlightenment, Part 1: The Sophists

A History of Greek Philosophy #3 Part 1

by W.K.C. Guthrie

The third volume of Professor Guthrie's great history of Greek thought, entitled The Fifth-Century Enlightenment, deals in two parts with the Sophists and Socrates, the key figures in the dramatic and fundamental shift of philosophical interest from the physical universe to man. Each of these parts is now available as a paperback with the text, bibliography and indexes amended where necessary so that each part is self-contained. The Sophists assesses the contribution of individuals like Protagoras, Gorgias and Hippias to the extraordinary intellectual and moral fermant in fifth-century Athens. They questioned the bases of morality, religion and organized society itself and the nature of knowledge and language; they initiated a whole series of important and continuing debates, and they provoked Socrates and Plato to a major restatement and defence of traditional values.

Genres: Philosophy, History, Greece, Nonfiction

356 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1962

About the author

William Keith Chambers Guthrie was a Scottish classical scholar, best known for his History of Greek Philosophy, published in six volumes between 1962 and his death.

Reviews

[KamRun · Rating 3 out of 5]

افتخار مخالفت و حتی مبارزه با برده‌داری تا ابد نصیب سوفسطائیان یونانی است که با تکیه بر مفهوم قانون طبعیت و بر پایه‌ی مبانی نظری، با اصل و ریشه‌ی برده‌داری مخالفت کردند و مکتب سقراطی - یعنی افلاطون و ارسطو - از این جهت یک گام عمدی به قهقرای اخلاقی محسوب می‌شود. / برداشت آزاد از کتاب

تا امروز برای گزاره‌ی "تاریخ را فاتحان می‌نویسند" مصداقی روشن‌تر از آنچه بر سوفسطاییان گذشته پیدا نکرده‌ام. طیف وسیعی از روشن‌اندیشان و مترقیان یونان باستان که بواسطه اختلاف نظر با پیروان مکتب سقراطی، آثارشان نابود گشت و به فراموشی سپرده شد و امروز تنها با استناد به گزارش‌های جانبدارانه‌ی افلاطون و بریده‌هایی نامنسجم از دیگران، آراء و عقایدشان را می‌دانیم. عموما از سوفسطائیان، بخصوص در تفکر اسطوره‌ای عوام، به بدی یاد می‌شود و آن‌ها را مردمی حیله‌گر، بدذات و پول‌دوست می‌دانند. در کتب آموزشی مقدماتی فلسفه، اولین بار نام سوفسطائیان در ماجرای اعدام سقراط آورده می‌شود و در کتاب‌های آموزشی منطق هم‌رده‌ی آن، در هنگام ذکر مثال‌هایی از استدلال‌های نادرست منطقی و ریشه‌ی واژه‌ی سفسطه! حال آنکه اگر سوفیست‌هایی نظیر پروتاگوراس و گرگیاس نبودند، امروز نه نامی از سقراط بود و نه افلاطون. شاید روزی در پایانِ تاریخ، آن را از نو خواندیم و این بازخوانی قطعا شامل تاریخ فلسفه هم خواهد شد

درباره‌ی کتاب - جلد نخست از مجموعه‌ی 2 جلدی سوفسطائیان ( و جلد 10 مجموعه تاریخ فلسفه گاتری)

نویسنده در این جلد از کتاب، پس از بررسی اجمالی تاریخچه‌ی اندیشه‌ی سوفسطائیان و آثار مهم آن‌ها، به چیستی مفاهیم اساسی مورد بحث آنان می‌پردازد: طبعیت (فوزیس)، سنت (نومیا) و قانون (نوموس)، مهم‌ترین محور‌های مجادلات فلسفی آن زمان که با ظهور طبیعت‌گرایان و پیشرفت اندیشه‌ی الحادی آغاز شد، در دوره‌ی سقراط به اوج خود رسید و در دوره‌ی افلاطون و ارسطو با استیلای سنت سقراطی بر فضای فکری یونان تا حد زیادی از حرارت افتاد. تصور بر این بود که نیل به تعریف صریحی از این مفاهیم، یافتن پاسخی برای پرسش‌هایی پیرموان چیستی عدالت و ارتباط آن با طبیعت و قانون در حوزه‌ی اخلاق و سیاست امکان‌پذیر می‌کرد، که چنین نشد. پرسش‌هایی که قرن‌ها بعد توسط هیوم، استوارت میل و روسو با همان محوریت تکرار شد.

نویسنده در جلد نخست، از منظری کلی‌نگرانه به تعریف مفاهیم طبعیت و قانون و ارتباط میان آن‌ها می‌پردازد و سه رویکرد اصلی فلسفی رایج در یونان باستان را در قبال این مفاهیم بررسی می‌کند. جایگاه این مفاهیم و ارتباطات در محاورات افلاطون و اندیشه‌ی ارسطو بر کسی پوشیده نیست و از این منظر می‌توان این کتاب ( و جلد دومش) را مقدمه‌ای بر کل تاریخ فلسفه یونان باستان دانست، مدخلی ارزشمند برای ورود به بطن فلسفه افلاطون و ارسطو

[James F · Rating 4 out of 5]

Originally published as part one of his History of Greek Philosophy, v.3: The Fifth-Century Enlightenment; part two has also been published separately as Socrates, which I will be reading in a month or so. I read the first two volumes of the History, on the Presocratic natural philosophers, almost fifty years ago; they are still the best books I have read on the Presocratics. Like the Presocratics, the Sophists are known only through fragments and generally hostile references in Plato and Aristotle, and even more than in the first two books this is a speculative attempt (though based on what evidence we have) to reconstruct their thought.

As the subtitle of the original version indicates, the Sophistic movement had many similarities in themes and spirit with the Enlightenment of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and Guthrie points them out. He makes the point that there was no real "school" of Sophists, and they differed on most points among themselves; what makes them an identifiable group is not the answers they gave but the questions they were concerned with, many of which were first raised in the fifth century BCE and are still being debated today. These thinkers are far more interesting to me than the more conservative Plato, and it is really unfortunate that their works have been lost; Guthrie suggests that it was because they were more topical than systematic writers and that Plato and Aristotle more or less superseded them, but I think it is also due to the fact that all ancient writers had to pass through the bottleneck of copying by the Christians and Moslems in late antiquity and the Middle Ages, and these writers were simply not as congenial as Plato and Aristotle to the religious-minded. Guthrie unavoidably has to discuss the Sophists largely on the basis of the use of them as characters in Plato's dialogues, which probably gives a fair idea of what the movement as a whole was like but is very unreliable when it comes to the specific positions of particular figures.

Most of the book is organized by themes, such as the Nomos-Physis (Convention vs. Nature) opposition, the idea of the "Social Compact", Ethical Relativism, Rationalizing of Religion and Skepticism, etc. At the end he briefly discusses the ten individuals we know the most about, Protagoras, Gorgias, Prodicus, Hippias, Antiphon, Thrasymachus, Critias, Antisthenes, Alcidamas, and Lycophron, and tries to reconstruct their positions as coherent approaches. Not surprisingly nearly all of these figure as characters in Plato's dialogues.

[Falokun Esther · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book create awareness of the history on Education in ancient Greece. It is such an Enlightening book to read.

[Dan DalMonte · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an outstanding book on a fascinating group of thinkers. The Sophists believed in relativism, and they also distinguished between physis and nomos. Relativism is the doctrine that what is true is relative to an individual or culture. It is not true absolutely. The distinction between physis and nomos is that between nature and law. The suspicion was that laws, since they were so diverse and varied from culture to culture, is just a matter of arbitrary convention that has no basis in nature. Plato demonized the Sophists as spin artists that undermined public morality, but Guthrie encourages us to develop a more sophisticated approach to this diverse body of thinkers.