why was aristotle critical of the sophists?
Although Gorgias presents himself as moderately upstanding, the dramatic structure of Platos dialogue suggests that the defence of injustice by Polus and the appeal to the natural right of the stronger by Callicles are partly grounded in the conceptual presuppositions of Gorgianic rhetoric. The sophists were itinerant professional teachers and intellectuals who frequented Athens and other Greek cities in the second half of the fifth century B.C.E. This in large part explains the so-called Socratic paradox that virtue is knowledge. Hulme Professor Emeritus of Greek, Victoria University of Manchester. Gorgias | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy After Pericles death this avenue became the highroad to political success. Firstly, much of what we think we know about individual sophists rests on very meagre evidence, and Why was Plato sophist critical? For Hegel (1995/1840) the sophists were subjectivists whose sceptical reaction to the objective dogmatism of the presocratics was synthesised in the work of Plato and Aristotle. Lyotard views the sophists as in possession of unique insight into the sense in which discourses about what is just cannot transcend the realm of opinion and pragmatic language games (1985, 73-83). He is depicted by Plato as suggesting that sophists are the ruin of all those who come into contact with them and as advocating their expulsion from the city (Meno, 91c-92c). The Apology is one of the so-called Early Dialogues of Plato. Socrates Heeded an Internal 'Voice'. Plato and Aristotle nonetheless established their view of what constitutes legitimate philosophy in part by distinguishing their own activity and that of Socrates from the sophists. Protagoras could be asserting that (i) there is no mind-independent wind at all, but merely private subjective winds (ii) there is a wind that exists independently of my perception of it, but it is in itself neither cold nor warm as these qualities are private (iii) there is a wind that exists independently of my perception of it and this is both cold and warm insofar as two qualities can inhere in the same mind-independent entity.
why was aristotle critical of the sophists?