Socrates And The Sophists Essay

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Socrates is known as a great Greek philosopher. The Sophists happen to be Socrates contemporary philosophers. Socrates as a philosopher is always seen distinguishing himself from the Sophists. As a general definition, a philosopher is a lover of wisdom and a sophist is the person who is wise himself. Philosophy is the pursuit of true knowledge and sophistry is the art of rhetorically manipulating the known facts. Here starts the distinctive point between Socrates and the Sophists. But this distinction is very complicated and confusing to find out. Although Socrates and the Sophists seem to have set the similar goals, the difference lies in the way and purpose of approaching those goals.
Both the Sophists and Socrates belong to the same line of profession which is teaching but the main difference is that the Sophists charge a good fee for the learning they provide. The sophists have a vanity that they turn people wiser. But Socrates does not take money for his efforts. He never claims to distribute wisdom among people. He is a travelling preacher of truth while the sophists are professionals who are paid by aristocratic young men in particular for their teaching efforts (Chrome)
Bothe Socrates and the sophists surely belong to Greece but we see that the sophists are prone to travel from city to city to practice their philosophy and to increase their followers but this is not the case with Socrates because he is never found going from one city to another to do his teaching. He seems to be very loyal to Athens while the sophists do not stick just to Athens. It shows that the pursuit of the philosophical goals of the sophists and Socrates has different directions.
A philosopher has to have belief in some ideals. In this regard,...

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...wise people who already know everything. Socrates has never pretended to know the truth, he just believes in seeking the ultimate truth. For the sophists, knowledge is power, and those who know a lot must be the rulers. This fact is another main cause of distinction between Socrates and the sophists.
It is true that both Socrates and the sophists belong to the similar field and set a more or less a prominent and similar goal which is knowledge and truth, but their ways to reach their destinations are not similar. The basic purposes behind attaining knowledge are very much different from each other. The fact of the matter is that we cannot ignore or give less importance either to Socrates or the sophists because Socrates is the legend of the world of philosophy and we owe a lot to the sophists for their rhetoric art of persuasion which is still practiced till today.

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