[MD] the sophists

[skutvik at online.no]

Greetings Marsha, great input.
 
May 14. you wrote 

> 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:  


I take this to be Susan Jarrat. 

    "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. "    

Still S.J?

    The third he (Jaeger, Werner) attributes to Protagoras alone, 
    providing a positive picture of sophistic education as a 
    mediation between individual and group:   

OK, the Aretê - Quality - of the Old Greek (in ZAMM  the Homeric 
heroes) is clearly the Social level's god-focussed reality and the "new 
metaphysics of Plato" (dammit she says metaphysics!!) is the Aretê of 
the budding intellectual level. And the Sophists falls between these two 
eras into some third - Protagonist - class?.        

    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)"

Well, this is very academical, but at least the Sophist did not represent 
the Homeric hero's bravery, glory, contempt for death ...etc, that's for 
sure, thus - in moqspeak - they weren't social "valuists", but then in the 
MOQ the next is intellectual value and IMO  "man the measure" was 
intellect's budding subjectivism, just as Truth was its budding 
objectivism. We must understand that intellect had a long embryonic 
stage, the subject/object terms did not arrive until Medieval Ages and 
mind/matter not until Descartes.    

   
Marsha: 
> 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.  

Right, in a Q retrospect, social quality was overrun by intellectual 
quality, but it was a  long haul (as told in ZAMM) first Socrates' TRUTH 
vs ILLUSION dualism, then the bickering over what was true and what 
was illusory. Plato said Ideas were the real thing while Senses 
deceives us, then Aristotle's Substance as permanent (true) with Form 
the transient i.e. illusory part. But under it all rested the Illusion/True 
dualism which is SOM's hallmark. What is illusory and what is true is 
still not settled and will never be settled because intellect is a static  
level and its S/O an aggregate you can't have one without the other. 

> 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.  

Well, a little facetiously: Even if Plato wrote "The Republic" I don't think 
the Sophists were his hate objects because they were "democrats". 
IMO  Protagoras & Co were budding intellectuals too. That of 
humankind a social being may have been an early Q-like insight of 
"intellect is out of society". 

Thanks Marsha, Great stuff, keep reading and sharing 

Bodvar