top of page
Peter Critchley

Teasing Out Truth: A Word in Praise of Sophism

Updated: Dec 28, 2020



Teasing Out Truth


Bridging the Gap Between Theoretical Reason and Practical Reason


Objective Truth and Subjective Appreciation


In my work on ‘rational freedom’ I have frequently affirmed transcendent standards of truth and justice against the conventionalism and relativism of a Sophism that reduces those standards to being mere functions of money and power. At the same time, I have also been concerned to argue that these standards cannot simply be asserted and imposed but have to be actively willed. I have, therefore, argued consistently against elitist statement and authoritarian imposition. My doctoral work on Marx argued for the democratisation of power, politics, and philosophy as against what I called the theoretico-elitist model of a static mechanistic metaphysics. (see the ‘Books’ page on my site). In developing that view I was highly conscious of the figure of the Lawgiver which loomed large in idealist thought and which continues to haunt the prescriptions of those who take their stand on a pre-political truth. That view separates nature and culture and reads the reason of the former against the reason of the latter. Realising healthy and immanent potentials is as cultural, and hence political, as it is natural given the unity of the two worlds. It is with that understanding that we can shift from a criticism of Sophism at its worst – as denying objective standards of right and wrong, good and bad – to an appreciation of the lessons taught by the Sophists – the need to argue a case and to persuade people of the truth and justice of a case. That, indeed, is precisely what I have ever sought to do whilst affirming transcendent standards against conventionalism and relativism. In criticising Sophism over the years, then, I have been employing Sophist tools in the search for practical truths. This is precisely what bridging the gap between theoretical reason and practical reason is about.


The Ancient Greeks had critical-practical ways of disclosing/conveying truth and contesting disinformation. If we can retain the idea of truth as something that stands independently of the manner of its communication, then these ways can be recovered to advantage.


In arguing for transcendent standards of truth and justice as against conventionalism, constructivism, and relativism, I develop the insights of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle against sophism. By ‘sophism’ here I refer to views which are rooted in no reality other than power and its assertion in particular societies. At the same time, I make it clear that truth cannot simply and passively be given but must be actively willed, assimilated, and lived. In other words, objective truth as such is passive when locked up in the attic of Platonic forms and ideals, and becomes active only in its incarnation in human relations and practices in time and place. The key question, then, concerns the processes involved in that incarnation. I have consistently criticized the idea that some possess objective truth and seek to convey it to others through a passive process of information as a brute and blunt rationalism. That educative model dominates among those who take their stand on the truth revealed by science. Their idea of practice is one of a technological know-how, characterised by a design and engineering approach to politics, ethics, and communication.

This is all wrong and destined to fail. Lamentations of a ‘post-truth’ age take aim against disinformation, but miss the real source of frustration which lies in a simplistic and large part false understanding of truth and its communication and actualisation. The Ancient Greeks knew this and hence sought to develop the means with which to bridge the realms of theoretical and practical reason so as to establish connection between objective reality and its subjective appreciation. In the phrase ‘freedom is the appreciation of necessity,’ ‘necessity’ refers to reality, with ‘freedom’ referring to the subjective appreciation of that objective truth and morality.

In the main, my writing on this subject has been based firmly on Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle and their defence of objective truth and morality against those sophists who rejected such notions to render truth and morality conditional upon power and politics. At the same time, I have been concerned to make it clear that truth cannot simply be stated and given, but has to be teased out through rhetoric and dialectic.

It is in this teasing out of truth – subjective appreciation – that we can look upon the Sophists more profitably, rather than insisting on a simple dichotomy between Socrates/Plato/Aristotle and objective truth and the Sophists and subjectivity. It is easier to set this question up in terms of Socrates/Plato/Aristotle versus the Sophists, but to the extent that that simply establishes a stark antithesis between objectivity and subjectivity it merely leaves us with the key problem unresolved – how objective truth and morality is to be subjectively appreciated, understood, recognised, assimilated, embodied, and articulated in practice. That is precisely how I have sought to develop the insights of Socrates/Plato/Aristotle, by bridging the gap between contemplation and action, theory and practice, theoretical reason (knowledge of the world) and practical reason (action in the world). Sophists have come down in history as philosophers who were capable of arguing contrary cases with equal plausibility, being happy to be rewarded monetarily for their agnosticism. Socrates/Plato/Aristotle rightly criticized this as a betrayal of philosophy as a commitment to truth. We should note here also that the notion of truth here applies as much to ethics as to science. Socrates/Plato/Aristotle held that there was such a thing as moral knowledge as well as scientific. It is noticeable in the contemporary world that the notion of a ‘post-truth’ society tends in the main to apply to the disrespect of (scientific) fact. As Alasdair MacIntyre’s book After Virtue (1981) makes clear, lamentations of being ‘post-truth’ apply as much to ethics as to science. Society has departed from the intellectual and moral virtues and their cultivation and practice through forms of the common life.

That condition, we could argue, is sophist, with truth and justice being mere functions of power and political struggles. That is how I have tended to use the term. This is how Rousseau, one of the greatest modern Platonists, used the term ‘sophist’ when taking aim against all those standing in line of descent from Thomas Hobbes and his endless war of all against all. Hobbes’ state as Leviathan was not a genuine public community but a military pact securing the civil peace. Rousseau sought a genuine public life.

I argue that, in seeking a Plato for the democratic age, Rousseau is a Platonist of the heart as well as the head. This view is expressed perfectly in Rousseau’s seemingly contradictory notion of ‘the General Will.’ Critics argue, with good reason, that a will can only be particular. Rousseau understood this. In his formulation of the General Will, Rousseau was attempting to reconcile the two great wings of the western philosophical tradition – objectivity (reason-nature, knowledge of the external world, fact) and subjectivity (reason-culture, will and artifice, value). The truth of the former could not simply be passively stated and dictated to the latter but had to be actively willed and assimilated by the latter. In this, Rousseau went beyond authoritarian-elitist notions of education and rule by way of Platonic philosopher-kings and Guardians to a democratized Platonism, thus answering Plato’s old question as to whether democracy is capable of supplying itself with a self-limiting principle in the affirmative.

My motivation in writing this piece is to make clear that some such notion can also be discerned in the approach of the sophists. In fine, moving away from the common understanding of sophists as rootless and agnostic philosophers in the service of money and power, we come to the key issue of active appreciation. Accepting the existence of transcendent and objective standards of truth and morality against which to test competing arguments and claims, the question concerns how these standards are to be commonly recognized and assimilated. That, arguably, is something that the sophists were concerned with, developing tools to that end.

I tend to criticize sophists and sophism in the way that Rousseau did. It is as well to remember that whilst Rousseau also slammed metaphysics in no uncertain terms, he himself was a metaphysician of the highest order. The confusion here lies in the fact that Rousseau, like Marx, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, and Heidegger after him, was a critic of scholastic and abstract approaches and sought the resolution of philosophical questions in practice. This has led some critics to see Marx, for instance, as a sophist himself, drawing a parallel between Marx’s insistence on class struggle as the motor force of history and Thrasymachus’ view that justice is the interests of the strongest. Against this, I argue that Marx sought an end to class, class relations and hence class struggle in order to realize a human commonality based on standards of justice and truth. That’s not how Marx himself advanced his argument, but that incarnation of truth and justice through the historical process presupposes the existence of transcendent standards. If Marx, like Rousseau, can be characterised as something of a sophist here, moving away from passive metaphysical-mechanistic assertions of transcendent standards, then this can only be in the sense of sophism I am concerned to develop in this article, not in the sense of reducing truth and justice to power.

This is expressed most clearly in Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach, where Marx writes:

The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove the truth — i.e. the reality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking in practice. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking that is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question.

Marx, Thesis II on Feuerbach


This is not so much a rejection of objective truth but of abstract metaphysical intellectualising in order to discern and establish that truth. Such philosophising is endless. Rather than endless philosophical disputation over questions which are bound to remain ontologically uncertain, Marx sought to establish truth in the realm of practice.


It is in this sense that we can appreciate sophists as more than amoral intellectualizers in the service of money and power but as people concerned to bridge the gap between theory and practice. If practice without theory is blind, defaulting to dominant power, then theory without practice is impotent. Like the view Marx stated concisely in the Theses, the sophists were concerned not with absolute Truth (Sophia) but with the processes enabling the establishment of practical truths. The emphasis was therefore on arriving practical truths through rhetoric, dialogue, and dialectic.


This is precisely how I have sought to develop the insights of Socrates/Plato/Aristotle into objective reality and truth.






To that extent, I have sought not merely to state an objective truth but to incite and facilitate its subjective appreciation. That, arguably, is something that the sophists also sought to do. Of course, their techniques were heavily criticized by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle and those who philosophized in their tradition, to the extent that they paid scant regard for and moved away from notions of absolute Truth (Sophia).


Rather than restate Plato here, I have sought to emphasise the extent to which Socrates took philosophy, as a philosophizing, to the public square, engaging with one and all in the market in order to contest false views and claims. Sophist techniques in this respect are also valuable in challenging disinformation. Whilst those aligning with the Plato/Aristotle case for objective reality and truth would consider sophists and sophism to be implicated in the rise of a ‘post-truth’ society, it is arguable that techniques for interrogating competing claims are valuable in teasing out the truth and sustaining a society of truth-seekers, fostering a practice that is independent of money and power.


The problems facing us are the same as they ever were – not only distinguishing truth from falsehood, but building the motivations to make the necessary distinctions. That means developing a quality of character in which truth and morality matter. Without that, truth and morality do indeed merely become functions of money and power, with knowledge degenerating into propaganda, the ‘truth’ of which is proven practically by way of assertion and imposition.


The disinformation and ‘fake news’ we lament in the contemporary age is nothing new. The only thing new is the forms – and their array – which such propaganda and disinformation take in the modern today. As the old phrase, variously attributed in various forms, has it: ‘a lie gets halfway around the world before truth puts on its boots.’ Speed of communication has facilitated the forces for spreading falsehood more than the forces for establishing truth. The question is not the existence of propaganda, fake news, and disinformation – they have always existed and always will – but how to strengthen the motives and capacities for truth-seeking in the fight against falsehood.


And it is in this respect that I consider Sophism in relation to Socrates/Plato/Aristotle. I am well aware of Plato’s criticisms of the Sophists and Sophism, as well as his critical comments on democracy. Plato’s question as to whether democracy is capable of supplying itself with a self-limiting principle is key, in terms of establishing the viability of democratic forms of governance. Developing those self-limiting capacities through the appreciation of reality and truth emerges as the key problem of politics. The only alternative is to assert impotent and abstract pre-political truths in an attempt to compel the world of politics – and people – to recognize truth and reality. That is the brute rationalism that is manifestly failing and which, indeed, is guaranteed to faith. We live in a political world, a world of people, each of whom is in possession of his or her own personal ‘yes’ and ‘no.’ The challenge is to bring these myriad ‘yeses’ and ‘noes’ into relation with truth and reality, thereby reconciling objectivity and subjectivity. An assertion of objective reality and truth is no more a solution to the problem than is the assertion of subjective will and preference on the part of human agents. It is quality of the mediation establishing the relation between the two realms that matters, the ‘appreciation’ in the phrase ‘freedom is the appreciation of necessity.’


The argument of this piece is that the Sophists employed certain rhetorical, dialogic, and dialectical skills which are essential for the viability and healthy functioning of democracy. Of course, those who think Plato’s critical rejection of democracy as a world mired in a self-cancelling subjective choice between rival false flatterers in politics will not be persuaded. That leaves them with philosopher-kings legislating and dictating truth as the only political form available to them, a patent authoritarianism and elitism which will be resisted in a democrat age.


In other words, you have to make a commitment to making democracy work, which means respecting the realm of politics in its own terms, or make the commitment to authoritarian forms explicit. The attempts of authoritarians to impose a pre-political truth by way of political and democratic pretence are not only laughable, they are utterly inadequate to the serious task of mediating and appreciating truth in politics.


It is in light of this that the Sophists are worthy of a more positive revaluation.


The Sophists were employed by wealthy clients to teach rhetoric. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle thought little of their education, seeing it as a lowly endeavour which was designed to sound deep to shallow minds. The commitment should be the contemplation of Truth (Sophia) as an end in itself, regardless of its practical benefits (and monetary reward). As a rhetoric designed to manipulate audiences, Plato contended that sophistry could never lead to Sophia. Which begs the question of what, in the context of ever increasing societies of the many, ever could. Aristocrats of the mind like Plato could attain this absolute Truth (Sophia) but who else? How could this truth be conveyed and assimilated? If we proceed from the pessimistic assumption that Truth is only for a minority, and that the majority of people are incapable of it, to be given some form of a ‘noble lie’ instead, then what of the claims to be fighting falsehood?


In writing on dialectic and the disclosure of truth (link provided above), I have sought to draw attention to the inadequacies of a position which takes its stand on absolute Truth (Sophia) alone. The statement of absolute Truth – in whatever form (the contemporary age rings with the motto of ‘tell the [climate] truth – is not sufficient to resolve political conflicts and determine political decisions. The insistence on Truth in this way is likely to meet with failure. The idea that several billions of people on planet Earth will arrive at the one objective Truth is fanciful. Those insisting on a politics of truth telling tacitly acknowledge this in directing their ‘non-political’ concerns directly to government, decision-makers, and those ‘in power.’ The deep scepticism such truth-tellers possess with regard to democracy is evident. Persuasion with respect to the members of the demos proceeds by way of pressure and education by way of information. This is inevitable once there is an insistence that government, politics, and people ‘tell the truth.’ Human beings are unable to handle the pure, unvarnished truth in all its complexity. Hence the need for dialectic and for mediation. The Sophists understood this and thus emphasised Phronesis, or practical truth. The Sophists understood that truth cannot simply be apprehended and communicated, but had to be actively appreciated by its recipients. To this end, therefore, they taught the skills which were required for the effective and efficient practice of democracy, facilitating the process by which many different individuals with different views and interests could come to an agreement by way of disagreement, attaining a workable consensus with respect to the truth. They therefore emphasised the skills of argumentation – how to construct an arguments – persuasion – how to engage with others – and conflict resolution. Seen from this perspective, Sophism is less a denial of truth than a practical recognition that you had to persuade people as to the truth of the matter. Stating and dictating the truth is not only unpersuasive but is likely to be incomprehensible and breed resistance. The Sophists therefore sought to make truth accessible and persuasive by way of rhetoric and skills of argumentation. This allows us to see Sophism in new light. Instead of being manipulative, deceitful, and disingenuous, Sophism as argumentation and persuasion accurately reflects the nature of the reality human beings experience in common. Politics is about difference and disagreement. Attempts to override the inherent yes/no of the human social world will necessarily take authoritarian form given the resistance of individuals to imposed truths lacking processes of comprehension and assimilation. The trick is to lead people to truth through that difference and disagreement, hence the emphasis on rhetoric, dialogue, and dialectic. Without those skills and tools, all that there is is an abstract truth and authoritarian imposition, a blunt rationalism which tries to fill empty and passive minds with information on the assumption that action follows in due course. Such thinking is almost wholly wrong.


I write this piece in order to clarify some points in my own work. I have argued against Sophism as a rootless and agnostic, even amoral, school of philosophy, reducing truth and morality to power. In that, I have taken my stand upon Socrates/Plato/Aristotle. At the same time, I have always insisted that the abstract statement of objective truth is insufficient, and that transcendent standards are incarnated in time and place through social practice. To that extent, I have been making a sophist argument, albeit one that affirms the existence of the absolute Truth (Sophia) of Socrates/Plato/Aristotle. So there is a need to be clear about my usage of the term Sophism. My concern all along has been to build a bridge between this absolute Truth (theoretical reason, knowledge of reality) and the practical social and political world (the world of practical reason). Set in this context, Sophism seeks to develop skills that lead to an appreciation of practical truth. That’s not the absolute or ultimate Truth of those affirming transcendent standards (hence Marx’s criticism of the scholasticism of thinking about objective reality). I affirm rather than repudiate transcendent standards with respect to reality and truth. Dialectic, dialogue, and debate have to be about something substantive. But I do affirm politics as dissensus and disagreement and do underline the necessity of debate when it comes to argumentation and persuasion (as against ‘telling the truth’ taking the authoritarian form of government telling the people). Dialectic, dialogue, and debate is a matter of critical inquiry on the part of truth-seekers. That process is the path to truth. In my teacher training I learned a valuable lesson. In one of the first classes we were asked to define ‘learning.’ Most people referred to knowledge, information, as in conveying some identifiable and solid body of truth. This is wrong. Learning is not about facts and knowledge and logic – learning denotes a change in behaviour. The processes inducing that change are all-important. An approach which overrides those processes by way of a statement of truth by way of facts, knowledge, and information will not only fail, but will more likely be counter-productive.


Argumentation, disagreement, and debate are integral to the health and proper functioning of democracy. In contrast, a politics which is modelled on truth and its telling proceeds by way of passive statement in expectation of automatic response, recognition, and agreement, and hence suppresses critical reflection, questioning, and dialogue. If truth is non-negotiable, then a politics of truth can only be about statement instead of negotiation. One can only say ‘yes’ to statements of truth. The ‘yes/no’ which defines the shared reality of human beings in society is thus denied. People are rendered voiceless, faced only with an unarguable and unquestionable statement of truth. Lack of exchange incites resistance and a retreat to the trenches. If all that there is is an absolute and ultimate truth that is non-negotiable, then the argument is over before it has even been made. But if there is no debate, then there is no persuasion either. And if there is no disagreement, then there is no genuine agreement based on the appreciation of truth. All that there is is a passive acceptance of a dictated statement of truth.


The problems of disinformation and propaganda take particularly insidious and invidious forms in the age of social media. Twitter and Facebook and such like are perfect for unargued statements of particular positions in the form of truth. A particularly invidious form of propaganda and disinformation is currently practiced by those who make a big claim to be without interests and to be above politics and beyond taking sides between left and right. They make a big play of not offering prescriptions whilst aggressively advancing very specific positions. It is propaganda and disinformation disguised as truth, fact, and reason and is all the more pernicious for being presented as an unarguable case. You can pick your own examples of this pernicious phenomenon here, there are many from which to choose. Always but always be cautious of those claiming to be non-political. Behind that claim lies an attempt to assert rather than argue a truth, to impose and legislate without dialogue and debate. This is propaganda and disinformation are an attempt to establish consent without debate, argument, and persuasion. In fact, by presenting truth as unarguable fact, the architects of truth-telling in politics attempt to conceal their role in what is a surrogate persuasion, a manipulation. This is not a genuine learning as a change in behaviour but propagandist forms of communication designed to manoeuvre people to a pre-determined end. Dressed up as truth, the process is based on manipulation rather than reason. Eschewing notions of a common moral reason, the authors of such manipulation reduce truth to propaganda. Instead of a genuine politics based on argument and disagreement, there is a realm in which one can only say ‘yes.’ To say ‘no’ is to be disloyal and to be the object of censorship or banishment. This is the end of politics, the end of debate and the end of a shared truth-seeking on the part of citizens.


This leads to the irony of a conclusion which sees that it is often those in line of descent of Socrates/Plato/Aristotle who betray truth in becoming the architects of this non-politics, effectively reducing reason to propaganda. It is the skills taught by the Sophists in order to lead us to a practical truth which may well prove to be the conditions for realising that absolute or ultimate truth. In criticising sophism so consistently over the years, I have been concerned to affirm transcendent standards of truth and justice against relativism, conventionalism, and constructivism. I stand by that. But there is another aspect to this question: truth cannot just be given but has to be actively willed. That is something that the Sophists emphasised, thereby seeking to incite people in the search for a practical truth.


Sophists argued that propaganda is compliance, the means by which authoritarians and elitists sought to rule over society and the people in it. Plato didn’t think that most people would be able to access Truth, a view which led him to be immensely critical of democracy. These views are being increasingly expressed in the world, in light of a collective failure to address the converging social, economic, and ecological crises besetting the planet. It’s the wrong turn, a reactionary cul-de-sac. Not enough has been done to cultivate the intellectual and moral virtues, to embed deliberative democracy, to foster debate and dialogue. The attempt to translate the language of science and logic in politics only serves to further undermine argumentation and persuasion. Faced with repeated defeats in politics, the defeated are emphasising fact-checking, as if a restatement of the facts of the matter will be sufficient to overcome political adversaries. There is a complete failure to learn the lessons with respect to debate, persuasion, argumentation, rhetoric – a failure to understand why a blank statement of facts will not in itself be persuasive. That approach to ‘telling the truth’ is ill-equipped to handle the nature of a shared experience and reality which is nuanced and many-sided, and involves sides and stakes. A healthy and functioning democracy is possible only by way of cultivating reflection, deliberation, and debate, an approach which the Sophists developed. Their concern was to bring people to a practical truth, rather than paralyse people in the search for an absolute and ultimate but seemingly always elusive Truth. It is in that sense that Marx rejected speculative thought about objective as scholastic.

I don’t reject transcendent standards of truth and morality. On the contrary, I affirm these very standards against conventionalism, constructivism, and relativism. To that extent, I have at length argued for the absolute and ultimate truth sought by Socrates/Plato/Aristotle over the years. But – and this is an enormous but – I have argued thus in a concern that that truth be incarnated practically in time and place. In making the argument that truth cannot just be passively given but has to be actively recognized, willed, and lived I have underlined dialectic, rhetoric, debate, and dialogue. Having railed against Sophism as agnostic on the truth and as rendering truth a function of money and power, it is only fair to recognise the very tools and skills I emphasise for the subjective and democratic appreciation of truth were ones taught by the Sophists.


I am concerned to make these points having noticed the growth of a pernicious non-politics on the part of those seeking to ‘tell the truth’ to government, politics, and people, seeking the obeisance of the political realm to a pre-political truth. This is not only wrong, it is actually counter-productive to the causes such people seek to advance. It is leading to a cult of authority which is the very opposite of the curiosity and debate which need to be fostered, inciting popular interest in issues of common concern. There is a reluctance to let these issues go from a realm of evidence and truth into a realm where all things are debatable. This is a denial of politics as a realm of disagreement and dissensus. Politics is a realm of the citizen ‘yes/no.’ Once the issue becomes one of truth pure and simple, then citizens are able only to give assent and say ‘yes.’ To say ‘no’ is to bring accusations of betrayal of truth and reason. I have commented elsewhere on the religiosity of this approach, with a concept of sin (eg the ecological sin committed by carbon criminals) coming to the fore to suppress contention. Accusation takes the place of argument, propaganda the place of persuasion, and compliance the place of consent. Such things suppress the dialogic temper which is required for democratic freedom as the subjective appreciation of reality. This approach is utterly incompatible with the norms of a democratic culture and we should firmly reject it.


Modern society isn't healthy. It’s social and political ecology is in as parlous a state as its natural ecology. We are creating a culture in which truth is being asserted in such a way as to suppress questioning and intellectual curiosity. There is a need to incite the common moral reason, reboot the operating system with which nature has endowed us. Transcendent truths and immanent capacities.


To end, I would like to re-affirm my commitment to transcendent standards and would therefore refer readers to my argument in favour of Aristotle's persuasion triad in Against Environmentalist Non-Politics In that post, I examine Aristotle's three modes of persuasion at length: the appeal to facts (logos), the inciting of emotional intelligence (pathos), and the appeal to trust and character in a broader purpose (ethos), There are people out there who are not 'deniers' with respect to environmental problems, they are just not convinced by the prescriptions which are seeming to be dictated on the basis of the logos alone. There is a need to properly integrate all aspects of this issue, from the theoretical to the practical - fact and value. The purpose of this essay has been to underline the skills and tools of argumentation and persuasion required if knowledge of the true and the good is to be acted upon. The Sophists taught the skills required for the attainment of practical truths. I think that is worthy of revaluation. It is not, however, news to the tradition of Socrates/Plato/Aristotle, however much those working in that tradition of objective reality, morality, and truth may have come to be divorced from practical intent and wisdom.

Comments


bottom of page