The Sophists

When thinking of the Sophsits during the ancient Greek era, I cannot help but to campare them to today's criminal defense attorneys.  The Sophists were willing to teach their "tricks" of persuasive speaking to large audiences but were only willing to do so for a hefty price, so if you were not very well off, the Sophists would pay no attention to you and would not teach you their ways.  The Sophists were very much so despised by the philosophers of their time.  They claimed to know the answers to every possible question, but when it came time to deliver these "answers", they would beat around the bush and use their "tricks" to move on to another topic and the audience for the most part would follow along and not realize they had just been bamboozled.  Philosophers such as Aristotle and Plato felt that the most important thing was to deliver the truth and only the truth while the Sophists only main goal was to win arguments.   Winning arguments was not a challenge for the Sophists because many if not most would choose a weak person to have an argument with and then they would use their wisdom (they were quite smart) to essentially and quite quickly break down their opponent's argument, leaving their audience in awe, but what the audience did not realize is that they were basically being set up because the Sophists had chosen a weak opponent to go up against.  Granted, their plan was brilliant.  Capitalism at its finest, I suppose.  The Sophists were in it for the money and the money they earned!  The true philosophers were in it to seek out the truth and justice and did not care so much about earning money and this is why the so truly despised the Sophists.

Kate