Practice question · Put in order
Arrange these steps in the reasoning that made the Sophists influential in Athens.
- Their subject shifts philosophy from nature to human affairs
- Democratic institutions make public speaking the route to influence
- The distinction between convention and nature becomes central
- Wealthy citizens seek training in persuasion
- Itinerant teachers arrive offering that training for fees
Hints
- The demand arises from the political structure before the teachers appear.
- The philosophical consequence comes last.
Show the answer
- Democratic institutions make public speaking the route to influence
- Wealthy citizens seek training in persuasion
- Itinerant teachers arrive offering that training for fees
- Their subject shifts philosophy from nature to human affairs
- The distinction between convention and nature becomes central
Why
The intellectual shift has a political cause: democracy made persuasion valuable, which created a market, which brought teachers whose subject matter changed what philosophy was about. Institutions shaped the questions.
Practise The Sophists
The app has 3 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. Philosophy I is free to start.
More questions on The Sophists
- Why does Plato have a particular motive to distinguish Socrates sharply from the Sophists?
- Sort each arrangement by whether the Sophists would classify it as nomos or physis.
- Which are genuine contributions of the Sophists?
- Protagoras’ claim that man is the measure of all things is compatible, on its strong reading, with there…
- Match each Sophist or term to what it is associated with.
- The Sophists shifted philosophical inquiry from physis (nature) to nomos (human convention). What follows…
- Complete the account of the Sophists’ central distinction.