[MD] the sophists

[MarshaV]

A quote by Susan Jarrattt from Rereading the Sophists: Classical Rhetoric Refigured':


"The sophists seem to fall between two ethical eras--the older Greece guided 
by traditional practices and gods, and the new metaphysics of Plato's fourth 
century philosophy. 
"... The third he (Jaeger, Werner) attributes to Protagoras alone, providing a 
positive picture of sophistic education as a mediation between individual 
and group:  

    It differed from both the formal and the encyclopaedic methods 
    of treating man not abstractly, as a lone individual, but as a 
    member of the community; and thereby it gave him a firm
    position in the world of values, and made intellectual culture 
    one part of the great whole which was human arete.  This 
    method also was intellectual education; however, it treated 
    the mind neither formally nor factually, but as conditioned by
    the social order. (293)"

--- 

The way I see this is that arete during Homer's time was a dedication to the
gods and a becoming one with them, a hero, a celebrity.  Plato and 
Aristotle turned arete into a concrete abstract entity and man became an
independent individual.  For Plato and Aristotle it is  all about the intellect.  
Protagoras, on the other hand, considered man a product of both community 
and intellect.  Protagoras was a democrat.  


 
 
 
 
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