The sophists in general agreed that there is an essential difference between things that exist by nature and things that exist by custom, convention or law. But there were disagreements among them about which is better, the way of nature or the way of nomos, and, indeed, about what the way of nature is. In either case, their arguments could be mobilized in defence of democracy or against it. Some, in support of oligarchy, might argue that there is a natural division between rulers and ruled and that natural hierarchy should be reflected in political arrangements. Others, in defence of democracy, might argue that no such clear division exists by nature, that men are naturally equal, and that it is wrong to create an artificial hierarchy, a hierarchy by nomos as against physis. But other permutations were possible too: a democrat could argue that a political equality created by nomos has the advantage of moderating natural inequalities and permitting men to live in harmony. Or it could be argued that, however similar men may be by nature, life in society requires differentiation, a division of labour, and hence some kind of inequality by nomos.
If sophists could be either oligarchs or democrats, it was democracy itself that had brought such issues into sharp relief. In the context of civic equality, the seemingly self-evident observation that, as Thucydides put it in the Melian Dialogue, ‘the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must’ could no longer simply be taken for granted and was up for discussion in unprecedented ways. There were now indeed two sides (at least) to the question. The juxtaposition in practice of civic equality and ‘natural’ inequality, the inequality of strength and weakness, produced particularly fruitful tensions in theory, which found expression both in Thucydides’s history and in philosophy.
It is not as easy as Plato would have us believe to distinguish between the intellectual activities of the sophists and true ‘philosophy’, or love of wisdom, as practised by Plato himself and the man more commonly credited with its invention, Socrates. To be sure, Socrates was not a paid teacher, though he could always rely on the largesse of his almost uniformly wealthy and well-born friends and acolytes – such as his greatest pupil, the aristocratic Plato. But both Socrates and Plato conducted their philosophic enterprise on the same terrain as the sophists. Not only were the ‘philosphers’ also concerned primarily with human nature, society, knowledge and morality, but they also proceeded in their own ways from the distinction between nomos and physis, between things that exist by law or convention and those that exist by nature. They certainly transformed this distinction, in a way that no sophist did, into a philosophical exploration of true knowledge. Unlike the sophists, who tended towards moral relativism or pluralism and never strayed far outside the sphere of empirical reality, Socrates and Plato were concerned with a different kind of ‘nature’, a deeper or higher reality which was the object of true knowledge. The empirical world was for them, and more particularly for Plato, a world of mere appearances, the object of imperfect conventional wisdom, at best (more or less) right opinion but not real knowledge. The philosophers drew a distinction between learning and persuasion, suggesting that the sophists, like lawyers, were not really interested in learning the truth but only in making a case and persuading others of it. Yet even if, for instance, Plato’s conception of the division between rulers and ruled is grounded in this hierarchy of knowledge and not on a simple test of brute strength or noble birth, we can still see the connections between the philosopher and those sophists who opposed the democracy on the grounds that it created an artificial equality in defiance of natural hierarchy. More particularly, we can see that the sophists, especially the democratic ones and Protagoras in particular, set the questions the philosophers felt obliged to answer.
Socrates and Protagoras
Socrates, probably the ancient Athenian most revered in later centuries, is also in many ways the most mysterious. He left none of his ideas in writing, and we have to rely on his pupils, especially Plato but also Xenophon, for accounts of his views. Although the differences between Plato’s and Xenophon’s Socrates have often been vastly exaggerated, it is certainly true that each of these two very different witnesses, the philosopher and the rather more down-to-earth and unphilosophical general, brings something of his own disposition to the portrait of his teacher. There has been heated debate about the ‘real’, ‘historical’ Socrates; about the degree to which Plato’s philosophy represents an extension of Socratic teachings or a clear departure of his own; and, not least, about Socrates’s attitude to the democracy.
The trial and death of Socrates have presented enormous problems of their own. While commentators seem, on the whole, to agree that the death sentence was a grave injustice, they differ on what it tells us about the democracy. On the one hand, there are those who see only an injustice perpetrated by a repressive democracy against a man of conscience, the model of the courageous intellectual who follows his reason wherever it takes him in defiance of all opposition and threats. On the other hand, some commentators see not only an injustice but also a beleaguered democracy, which had just come through a period of oligarchic terror and mass murder after a coup against the democratic regime; and they see in Socrates not only a philosopher of courage and principle but also a man whose friends, associates and pupils were among the leading oligarchs – a man who, as democrats fled the city, remained safely in Athens among his oligarchic friends, with every indication that they were confident of his support.
This is not the place to rehearse all these debates.12We can confine ourselves to a few less controversial facts about Socrates, his life and work, and then proceed to an analysis of those ideas that had the greatest consequences for the development of political theory. All we can confidently say about his life is that he was an Athenian citizen of the deme of Alopeke, born around 470 BC, son of Sophroniscus and Phaenarete; that he participated in some military campaigns, most likely as a hoplite (which required enough wealth to arm oneself and support a retainer) during the Peloponnesian War; that he took part as a member of the Council in the trial of the generals of 406 BC; and that he was tried and condemned to death in 399. There is little evidence to support the tradition that his father was a sculptor or stonemason (he may have owned slaves employed as craftsmen, as did the fathers of Isocrates and Cleon) and his mother a midwife, and even less that Socrates followed in his father’s footsteps. There is some evidence that he was a man of comfortable means, though certainly not among the very wealthiest. His friends and associates, however, were almost uniformly wealthy and well born; and the picture of Socrates regularly holding philosophical discussions with artisans around the streets and markets of Athens should be taken with a grain of salt.
During the oligarchic coup and the regime of the Thirty, Socrates stayed safely in Athens, as one of the privileged 3,000 citizens. Some time after the democracy was restored, a charge was brought against him for not duly recognizing the gods of Athens, introducing new gods and corrupting the youth. It seems likely that these accusations were, at least in part, a substitute for more overtly political charges ruled out by the amnesty; but, in any case, there can be no doubt that Athenians looked upon the philosopher with suspicion because of his association with the enemies of the democracy. This does not detract from his dignity and courage; and the main reason given for his refusal to escape with the help of his friends – that he must honour the laws of his polis – testifies to his principled commitment to the rule of law. In this respect, he was quite different from many of his oligarchic friends. But nor do his courage, dignity and loyalty to principle make him a supporter of the democracy.
The question then is whether the suspicions aroused by his associations are supported by what we know of his ideas. Here, again, we have little to go on. What we know with some degree of certainty is that he adopted a particular method of inquiry: engaging in dialogue with one or more interlocutors, he begins