{"id":5610,"date":"2021-10-24T16:26:51","date_gmt":"2021-10-24T14:26:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/icar.cnrs.fr\/dicoplantin\/?p=5610"},"modified":"2025-04-29T10:36:06","modified_gmt":"2025-04-29T08:36:06","slug":"sophism-sophist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/icar.cnrs.fr\/dicoplantin\/sophism-sophist\/","title":{"rendered":"Sophism, Sophist"},"content":{"rendered":"

SOPHISM, SOPHIST<\/span><\/h1>\n

The words sophism<\/em>, sophist<\/em> refer to very different realities in philosophy and in ordinary language.<\/p>\n

1. The Historical Sophists<\/span><\/h2>\n

In ancient Greece, the Sophists were the first to implement a philosophy of language in their interactions with their fellow citizens. Through calculated discursive interventions called \u201csophisms\u201d by their opponents, the Sophists destabilize the peaceful current representations of the world as seen through current language.<\/span> They emphasize the \u201carbitrariness\u201d of language (in the Saussurian sense of \u201carbitrary\u201d), and thus provoking naive speakers who consider language to be transparent and unproblematic. These discourses are not intended to deceive their listeners, but to show them the paradoxes of their current thinking and discourse.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the Euthydemus<\/em>, Plato stages Socrates deconstructing sophistical arguments, such as the following. Dionysodorus is a sophist, Ctesippus his naive interlocutor:<\/p>\n

[Dionysodorus:] \u2014 [\u2026] And your father turns out to be [\u2026] a dog.<\/span>
\n\u2014 And so does yours, said Ctesippus.<\/span>
\n\u2014 You will admit all this in a moment, Ctesippus, if you answer my questions, said Dionysodorus. Tell me, have you got a dog?<\/span>
\n\u2014\u00a0Yes, and a brute of a one too, said Ctesippus.<\/span>
\n\u2014 And has he got puppies?<\/span>
\n\u2014 Yes indeed, and they are just like him.<\/span>
\n\u2014 And so, the dog is their father?<\/span>
\n\u2014\u00a0Yes, I saw him mounting the bitch myself, he said.<\/span>
\n\u2014\u00a0Well then: isn\u2019t the dog yours?<\/span>
\n\u2014 Certainly, he said.<\/span>
\n\u2014 Then since he is a father and is yours, the dog turns out to be your father, and you are the brother of the puppies, aren\u2019t you?<\/span>
\nPlato, Euthydemus<\/em>, 298d-e. CW, p. 737<\/span><\/p>\n

This argument is not<\/span> intended to convince<\/strong> Ctesippus that he is the son and brother of a dog<\/span>. The Sophist does not deceive<\/em> his partners, he leaves them perplexed and angry<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The Sophists devised thought-provoking paradoxes<\/strong><\/span> such as the following one:<\/p>\n

Antiphon the Sophist claimed that the law, by obliging man to testify the truth in courts, often compels us to do wrong to one who has done us no harm, that is, to contradict the first precept of justice.
\n<\/span>\u00c9mile Br\u00e9hier, [History of Philosophy<\/em>], 1928.[1]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

The Sophists, along with the Skeptics, represent an essential intellectual movement for argumentation theory. The Sophists established the principle of debate between irreducibly contradictory discourses<\/span>,<\/strong> as the basic cases presented in Antiphon’s Second Tetralogy<\/em>, about a prosecution for accidental homicide; the case is discussed as follows:<\/p>\n

First speech for the prosecution<\/span>
\nReply to the same charge<\/span>
\nSecond speech for the prosecution<\/span>
\nSecond speech for the defense[2]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

The intellectual and social contributions of the historical Sophists have been stigmatized by Platonic idealism<\/strong> which has imposed on them deformations that persisted until Hegel and have survived in common language.
\nThe ancient sophists were no more sophists<\/em> in the modern sense of the word than Duns Scott was a dunce<\/em>.<\/p>\n

2. Contemporary Use: <\/span>The Sophism, an Intentional Paralogism<\/span><\/span><\/h1>\n

In contemporary usage, a sophism is an eristic discourse, that is, a deceptive and manipulative discourse whose intentions are difficult to unmask.
\nSince any kind of discourse can be denounced by calling it a \u201csophism\u201d, the concept is essential for analyzing the polemical reception of argumentative discourse.<\/p>\n

\n

[1]<\/a> \u00c9mile Br\u00e9hier, Histoire de la Philosophie<\/em>, Vol. 1, Antiquit\u00e9 et Moyen \u00c2ge<\/em> [Antiquity and\u00a0 the Middle Ages<\/em>]\u00a0Paris: PUF, 1981, p. 74.<\/span><\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Antiphon, Second Tetralogy<\/em>. KJ. Maidment, ed. Cited after www.perseus.tufts.edu\/hopper\/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0020%3Aspeech%3D3<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SOPHISM, SOPHIST The words sophism, sophist refer to very different realities in philosophy and in ordinary language. 1. The Historical Sophists In ancient Greece, the Sophists were the first to implement a philosophy of language in their interactions with their fellow citizens. Through calculated discursive interventions called \u201csophisms\u201d by their opponents, the Sophists destabilize the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-classe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/icar.cnrs.fr\/dicoplantin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/icar.cnrs.fr\/dicoplantin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/icar.cnrs.fr\/dicoplantin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icar.cnrs.fr\/dicoplantin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icar.cnrs.fr\/dicoplantin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5610"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/icar.cnrs.fr\/dicoplantin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14124,"href":"https:\/\/icar.cnrs.fr\/dicoplantin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5610\/revisions\/14124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/icar.cnrs.fr\/dicoplantin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icar.cnrs.fr\/dicoplantin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icar.cnrs.fr\/dicoplantin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}

A sophism is a paralogism wrapped in malicious language, produced to pull the rug out from under the opponent. The distinction between sophisms<\/i> and paralogisms<\/i> is based on an accusation of deceptive intent, which may or may not be properly substantiated.
\nParalogism is on the side of error and stupidity; sophism is a paralogism that serves the interests or passions of its author<\/strong>. According to the principle of \u201cwho benefits from the crime?<\/em>\u201d, such an \u201cerror\u201d is accused of malice by the recipient and potential victim. One moves from description to the accusation which is embedded in the negative contemporary use of sophist<\/em>, sophistry<\/em>, see fallacies: Aristotle fundamental list,<\/a> Paralogism<\/a>.<\/p>\n