Talk:Sophist

Before Plato, a sophist was someone who gave sophia to his disciples, i. e. wisdom made from knowledge. Well known sophists: Protagoras, Gorgias, Prodicus and Socrates himself.

This is not entirely true. A sophist was originally merely a wise man, and when the meaning of the term changed, it changed to mean a person who took money for education, which Socrates never did. Also, as early as Aristophanes' Clouds, the sophists were being criticized openly for misusing rhetoric in order to deceive. In fact, in Plato's Apology, Socrates makes direct reference to the things Aristophanes accused him of in The Clouds, in particular, being a sophist. While I agree that the sophists got a bad rap from history (We have only ~20 pages of the actual writings of the sophists compared to several plays worth of criticisms of them -- not all from Plato, either!), one cannot ignore that Protagoras himself said that a good rhetorician was able to make the weaker argument seem the stronger. This is not passing along wisdom, this is learning how to spin information to win. Not necessarily a bad thing, but the sophists weren't infallible either.

Once I have it edited, I may post a paper I wrote on the topic here, with citations, etc.