Athenian Democracy: Sophists vs. Socrates

The Dawn of Athenian Democracy: Historical Context

1. The Humanist Turn

• Historical and Political Factors: Pericles implemented significant political reforms, paving the way for democracy and abolishing the privileges of the old aristocracy and oligarchs. This democratic transformation experienced both its zenith and its decline. Athens faced both internal and external adversaries.
  • External Enemies: Sparta and the Spartan aristocracy, leading to the Peloponnesian War and the eventual defeat of Athens.
  • Internal Enemies: The aristocrats, initially accepting of reforms, but quickly became critical of the new political system, seeking to regain their former power.
• Social and Economic Factors: Greek society transitioned into an urban one, reliant on slave labor, necessitating new societal approaches and advocating for democratic equality. Participation in public life became a cornerstone of the democratic ideal. However, aristocrats clung to traditional values.
• Intellectual Factors: Earlier Greek physical science had reached an impasse. Intellectual focus shifted towards social and political coexistence, and the question of how it should be regulated and ordered. There was a search for ideals in all fields and an effort to establish a better balance between the individual and the polis.
• Cultural Factors: A significant intellectual shift occurred, favoring rational methods of understanding reality. The pursuit of ideals defining the new human being extended beyond philosophical reflection, encompassing art, medicine, and other disciplines.

Sophist and Socratic Education: A Comparison

The Sophists were a group of educators who taught in Athens for a fee. They believed that knowledge could be bought and transmitted from teacher to student. All Sophists were educators and masters of language. They believed the ultimate goal of education was the democratization of virtue. They educated based on the conviction that:

"All individuals possess inherent abilities that enable them to become good citizens, capable of defending their interests in the popular assembly." They believed all citizens could develop the skills to assert their rights and conduct successful business. The Sophists' educational curriculum focused on oratory, rhetoric, eristic (the art of debate), argumentation, finance, and law.

Socrates, in contrast, did not charge for his teachings. He believed that knowledge is something everyone attains through introspection; no one possesses it inherently. Knowledge, for Socrates, could only be achieved through dialogue and shared inquiry, and it remained perpetually elusive. The teacher served merely as a guide.

Socratic Moral Intellectualism and Ethical Theory

Socrates believed in virtue as a universal and objective concept, knowable and attainable by any human being through reason. This would, in turn, nurture their soul and make them good citizens. The wise individual seeks virtue in the exercise of power to achieve happiness. True knowledge, for Socrates, provided answers to ethical and moral questions. His theory, known as Moral Intellectualism, posits that those who commit evil do so out of moral ignorance, unaware of the evil they perpetrate. Since reason is the path to justice and happiness, it is reasonable to be just. According to intellectualism, human actions will be just if one acts justly, which is possible only if one knows what justice truly is.