Why did the sophists get such a bad rap?
because they argued like jews
>>1289323
faggot
Because they went against the common sense. At every point in history, a sophisticated would go against the beliefs of most people. In a power struggle the majority would win. A single victory at any point in history would compound overtime if nothing major changed.
>>1289323
Demagogic, materialistic, hyperskeptics, didn't believe in the truth, just winning arguments... They were the precursors to modern liberals. Good thing Plato and his disciples won the Kulturkampf of his age, sparing humanity from this plague for thousands of years.
Resentful platonists and just plain hypocrites like Aristotle.
If we ignore the snarl word that sophistry has become and just go back to the original meaning, being paid to teach, then clearly they won.
A sophist, nominalist, atheist, materialist monist, nihilist, panmobilist professor was teaching a class on Heraclitus, known weeper.
“Before the class begins, you must momentarily accept that a new class is beginning every moment, and that once the class is over you will never be able to recall the same class (or infinite number of classes made up of an infinitude of moments, as it were) again.”
At this moment a brave Platonic, Aristotelian, Thomist who full understood that the problem of universals was the central problem of all metaphysics and philosophy and who knew that all modern philosophy was the misguided following of Ockham’s nominalism, stood up and said:
“Everything flows, panta rhei; is that right, professor?”
The amorphous professor smirked quite formlessly and ambiguously replied, “Yes, it’s been approximately 2500 years since Heraclitus established the doctrine that everything flows.”
“Wrong. If everything flows, as you say, then the statement "everything flows” also flows, making it as permanent or established as the proverbial river that was no doubt was made up of babby Heraclitus’ tears, probably because he knew that he would never be a true philosopher.“
>>1289386
The professor was visibly shaken, and dropped his copy of "Wild Ones ft. Sia” by Flo Rida . He stormed out of the room crying those nominalist tears. The same tears that are not the same tears when they leave the eye as when they hit the floor. There is no doubt that at this point our professor, Jacques Derrida, had contemplated the Forms instead of peddling ancient sophisms among a degenerate Academia. He wished so much that he had a self to kill, but he himself had argued that the self is nothing but a transitory event in the great flow of things!
The students applauded and all read the Republic and accepted that everything derives its existence from one universal Form, Αγαθών. The Apology was read several times, and Socrates himself showed up and acted as midwife for all the noble truths that the students’ souls were pregnant with.
Nothing became of the professor because according to his own logic he ceases to be by the end of this post.
Χαλάζι Πλάτωνα.
