Spin Doctors
Since the first principles Tory was all about the motives and interests of intellectual of the 6th and 5th centuries BC, Sophists were positively included as part of the intellectual position of the 5th century. The word ‘Sophist” means ‘professional cleverness’. During the fifth century, sophists were teachers, speakers, and philosophers who were paid to use rhetoric. For the first time In history, philosophy became a job to earn money by selling Intellectual skills. They were spin doctors of that period.
There were some famous sophists such as Propagators, Georgia, Hippies, Produces, and Antiphon, among others. They made their living by selling their Intellectual skills to those who wanted to get a professional career and could afford to learn. Sophists offered an expensive private education that poor people could not get any education from them. They taught rhetorical skill: clever talk designed to enable their pupils to manipulate popular opinion in their favor. Furthermore, Sophists presented themselves as great facilitators of democratic procedures.
However, their effect was only to secure advantages for their richness. They tried to cheat the poor while they were taking advantage from the rich. Therefore their deeds were undemocratic under the enigmatic Ideology- anyone has the right to do anything whether they are rich or poor, whether they are high or low birth- which prevailed In 5th- century Athens. Therefore the question came up to be argued that “Are the Sophists a good thing or a bad thing? ‘ This disagreement has raged more than 150 years. The result changes depend on the prevailing ideology of the contemporary world.
The Sophists were generally condemned before 20th century. However, they were recovered from that bad reputation by the effects of Hitler who hold Plat’s potentially totalitarian political views, in the sass. Many liberal thinkers had come to doubt Plato who disagreed with the Sophist’s point of view, and to recognize Sophists as champions of liberalism. This outlook of 1 sass even continues until nowadays. It is encouraged by a naive liberalism which believes that totalitarianism and democracy are simple black and white alternatives.
However, the time is reached to the right time to reconsider on all the social exclusion, economic disadvantage, and political spin that what Is theoretically democracy and quite undemocratic In reality. Public opinion can be a good gulled to public policy only if the people are In a position to Judge and can exercise their Judgment freely. Nowadays, sophistry Is one of the methods by which politicians disguise their policies in alien clothing, to make people believe in them as more sealed tan teen really are. I Norte, spin doctors succeed democracy the slogan. L.
Test winner In the 4th century BC, when the great Sophists were all dead, Plato wrote more than twenty dialogues which he created a character called Socrates, based on the real Socrates who had died in BBC. Many of these dialogues describe Socrates as who totally disagreed with the idea of the best Sophists of his day. These Plat’s imaginary conversations make a range of valid uncertainties about the political and moral principle implication of the activities which relative to the Sophists. Socrates opposed the idea of Sophists’ teaching style.
He taught people without charge and always prepared to speak his own mind in which what he knows about. He did not care what people thought of him, and he was prepared to die rather than to follow the popularity of the majority vote. He traveled around the country and asked questions about knowledge (is opinion all that matters? ) and ethics (is anyone’s Judgment as good as anyone else’s? . These opened discussions of Socrates emphasize the shallowness and inadequacies in positions usually associated with the Sophists.
This issue arises as to whether these norms and conventions are really binding or not. Most people do the things that society tells them to do? The difference between nature and convention emerges all over the literature and political thought of the late 5th century BC. The Greek word for a man-made law or convention was ‘moos’ and nature law was ‘physics’. Many intellectuals of the second half of the 5th century in Athens became more desire to know the questions about whether such man-made laws could or should have authority to respect.
Where did they draw from their value? And were there perhaps other limiting factors or values that were independently and naturally right? Antiphon the Sophist suggested that conventions and laws directly conflict with what is naturally valuable. Society does little to make life actually better for those who do act self-righteous. Therefore it was always better to take hold of any opportunities to act unfairly and to steal the advantage.
Furthermore, Calicles described about the distinctions between nature and convention in the dialogue called Georgia that man-made laws postponed people room doing what they really wanted to do, which was to win as much as they could for themselves, at the expense of everyone else. Indeed worse those conventions were a cruel plot on the part of nature’s born losers. That was how democracy got going; the rule by great absolute ruler that would be natural in the cruel world of nature, the world in which the winners win and flourish, and the losers lose and die.
Only cowards would let those ideas set aside from their way of thinking. 2. MAN IS THE MEASURE Propagators was the most famous of the 5th-century Sophist who more favorable Attlee towards convention tan Atlanta Ana Calicles. He was rumors Tort sallying: Man is the measure of all things. If the word “Man” implies to human society as a whole, he probably meant that the conventions determined for human beings are the measure of deciding that what counts and what does not count as real; the world is as we make it out to be.
If the word “Man” refers as individual man, Propagators meant that each of us is a perceiver looking out at the world, and what we see is up to us; it is not fixed by any independent reality. Either way, Propagators appears to say that there is no independent truth about what things exist. In other words the entire world is a construct of people. Nevertheless, even if he was not a committed relativist about the gods, Propagators’ views on morality seem to have tending towards belief in changeable standards what was right for one society need not be right for another.
That is the morally unthinkable soon becomes thinkable. Nothing is sacred. 3. THE POWER OF PERSUASION Georgia compared the power of words to the effect of drugs or physical force. Georgia, the great master of rhetorical persuasion, was the most remarkable of the in 5th century Sophists by his speech in defense of Helen of Troy. The speech took an amusing theme but the work has a more serious aim. It explores and illustrates the corrupting power of words. Another work of Georgia was a classic text of early philosophy, typically called ‘On nature or what is not’. He proved through the text that rhetoric is so powerful.
In the text, he offered an amusing work of philosophy designed to convince nature of things with three conditions: (1) that nothing exists, (2) that if something existed, one could have no knowledge of it, and (3) that if nevertheless somebody knew something existed, he could not communicate his knowledge to others. Ill. AND THE SPIN-OFF The Sophists made an amazing final act of pre-Socratic philosophy by asking society to question its reason on existence, its political beliefs, its moral values, its religious beliefs, its educational system, its legal codes, and its codes of etiquette.
Even though Sophists were notorious of their deeds, they enlightened us the ideal democracy that values equality of opportunity. I believe History would have taken notice if the Sophists consistently used their power of persuasion to produce unfair results. However, the Sophists provided the tools for the average citizen to defend oneself, to participate in ileitis and to discover what he or she believed to be true. It placed rhetorical education within reach of the average middle class, and even gave some opportunities to us.
I agree with the idea that education in rhetorical skills can help to make democratic equality: everyone NAS relents to express Nils or near pollens without any pressure and without any manipulation. On the other hand, it can also be harmful to us if we are not aware of the intention of using rhetoric skills to manipulate others. Rhetoric is so powerful that it can persuade us to accept logically to disqualify truth. Today, technology has advanced to the highest degree and continues to do so rapidly.
Rhetoric continues to be an influential tool in education, politic and economic field. I can recognize the power that persuasion has on a society and its individuals. I also get sense and find the influence of a good speaker in everyday interactions. In conclusion, I assure that away from the Sophists’ intentions that rhetoric be used for political and Judicial purposes, it has also entered the society through advertisements, news media, the Internet and so forth. Even the friendliest conversation contains some element of persuasion to have an agreement.
